Ship detection with RADARSAT-2 quad-pol SAR data using improved notch filter based on freeman decomposition

Ploarimetric Synthetic Aperture Radar (POLSAR) provide more information of targets, advantages of which lays in its capability to acquire useful images with any-weather conditions and at night time. POLSAR image has been used to reconnaissance Ships and vessels. Specifically, this paper proposes an improved notch detector algorithm of ship with full polarimetric image. The methodology adopted the result of freeman decomposition instead of coherency matrix for constructing vector space of polarimetric targets. Furthermore, a factor related power is added to the detector in order to separate ships dominated by surface scattering mechanism form the sea. The proposed detector was tested with Radarsat-2 full polarimetric data and show significant agreement with the available sea truth. Comparing with SPAN, Polarimetric whitening filter and Polarimetric notch filter method, the proposed method enhance ship-sea contrast ratio and show higher detection ability.