Detection of Traffic Congestion in SAR Imagery

Abstract

Detection of traffic congestion is an important issue both for the transportation research community and everyday life of the motorists. A new type of information is needed for a more efficient use of road networks. Remote sens-ing sensors installed on aircrafts or satellites enable data collection for various traffic applications over large ar-eas, especially areas not covered with other, e.g. terrestrial sensors, or difficult accessible areas. Synthetic aper-ture radar (SAR) systems seem to be very promising due to their all-weather capability. We approach the traffic congestion detection problem with a two-channel SAR sensor flying in along-track (ATI) the motorway by com-bining various techniques: look processing, channel balancing, coherent change detection, e.g. displaced phase center array (DPCA), image processing and incorporation of a priori information such as traffic model and road network. The potential of the proposed method is demonstrated with airborne E-SAR data collected during sev-eral campaigns over highways in Germany. Method application for future tight formation of space satellites is discussed.