Promising Techniques for Future Maritime Surveillance Demonstrated With DLR's Airborne Radar Sensors F-SAR and DBFSAR

Abstract

The Microwaves and Radar Institute of DLR operates the airborne synthetic aperture (SAR) radar sensors F-SAR and DBFSAR. These sensors are used for investigating and demonstrating novel radar and signal processing techniques for a number of different applications. In the paper promising techniques for future Maritime Surveillance with High-Altitude Platforms (HAP) are discussed and demonstrated by using L- and X- band radar data acquired with F-SAR. A potential onboard processing concept is proposed which doesn't require conventional and time consuming SAR processing. The used techniques include automatic constant false alarm rate (CFAR) ship detection, tracking over long observation times, fusion with simultaneously acquired automatic identification system (AIS) data, and high-resolution inverse SAR (ISAR) imaging.