Ship Detection using Linear and Circular Range-Compressed Airborne Radar Data.

Abstract

In the paper a novel real time capable ship detection processing chain using single-channel range-compressed (RC) air-borne radar data is proposed. The proposed methodology is applicable to the linear, circular and arbitrary flight tracks. Ships are detected in the range-Doppler domain because ships moving with certain line-of-sight velocity are shifted to the exo-clutter region. Detection thresholds are computed using constant false alarm rate (CFAR) based sea clutter models. Robust target detection using CFAR requires an accurate description of the backscatter ocean clutter, also known as training data. In the paper, a novel approach to extract reliable training data is discussed. In addition, different sea clutter models are investigated and compared to choose suitable models for the data. Real linearly and circularly acquired single-channel RC data from DLR’s F-SAR system are used to verify the proposed methodology.