Onboard Processing Concept for Maritime Surveillance Demonstrated with DLR's Airborne Radar Sensors F-SAR and DBFSAR

Kurzfassung

In the paper an onboard radar processing concept for future Maritime Surveillance with High-Altitude Platforms is proposed. This concept does not require conventional and time consuming SAR processing. Instead small coherent processing intervals are used for detecting and tracking the ships in range-Doppler domain. In addition to reduced processing requirements, this has the advantage that even moving ships with small RCS can be detected when they are shifted along Doppler to the exo-clutter region. The used processing techniques and algorithms are discussed in detail and demonstrated by using radar data acquired with DLR's airborne radar sensors F-SAR and DBFSAR.