Ship Detection in Ice-Infested Waters Based on Dual-Polarization SAR Imagery

Author

Brekke, Camilla ; Anfinsen, Stian Normann

Author_Institution

Dept. of Phys. & Technol., Univ. of Tromso, Tromsø, Norway

Volume

8

Issue

3

fYear

2011

fDate

5/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

391

Lastpage

395

Abstract

This letter discusses the potential of automatic ship detection in ice-infested waters based on satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. The popular K -distribution is used to model the backscatter statistics of sea ice clutter. The goodness of fit of this model is assessed with the Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Anderson-Darling test statistics for both VV and VH polarizations. We also test the impact of introducing the Method of Log Cumulant (MoLC) estimator for the shape parameter of the K-distribution. Finally, a constant false-alarm rate ship detection algorithm, applying the K -distribution with the MoLC estimator, is evaluated on dual-polarization RADARSAT-2 SAR data. Our results demonstrate that this is a viable approach to ship detection in ice-infested waters.

Keywords

backscatter; radar detection; ships; statistical analysis; synthetic aperture radar; Anderson-Darling test statistics; K-distribution; Kolmogorov-Smirnov test statistics; automatic ship detection; backscatter statistics; constant false-alarm rate ship detection; dual-polarization RADARSAT-2 SAR data; dual-polarization SAR imagery; ice-infested waters; method of log cumulant estimator; satellite synthetic aperture radar imagery; sea ice clutter; shape parameter; Marine vehicles; Moment methods; Object detection; Pixel; Sea ice; Synthetic aperture radar; $K$ -distribution; Goodness of fit; sea ice; ship detection; synthetic aperture radar (SAR);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1545-598X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LGRS.2010.2078796

Filename

5610984