Range-Doppler Tracking of Ships using Single-Channel Airborne Radar Data.

Abstract

Tracking of ships in an open sea scenario is a key maritime surveillance requirement. Ship tracking using airborne radar platforms is not very well addressed in the literature. In this paper, a concept of ship tracking using single-channel range-compressed (RC) airborne radar data is proposed. The proposed tracking algorithm is suitable for dense multi-target scenarios. Tracking is performed in the range-Doppler domain where the moving ships may appear out of the clutter region, improving their detectability. Ship tracking is an extended target tracking problem, therefore the center of gravity of the detected ship pixels are tracked over longer time. A powerful track management system is developed us-ing SQLite database which can handle gaps in the data and also the false detections. Some simulations and real experi-mental results from DLR’s F-SAR system are provided to prove the concept.