Detection of wind farm using the relative phase of compact polarimetry SAR

This paper discusses the potential for automatic ocean surveillance using compact linear polarization (CL-pol) SAR, with large area coverage, including high sea state conditions. Here, the target is a wind farm in the North Sea. The relative phase derived from CL-pol SAR is employed for detection of the wind turbines, apart from the wind turbines´ wakes, based on fine mode quad-polarization (quad-pol) RADARSAT-2 (RS-2) images. The relative phase of CL-pol measurements improves the contrast between the wind turbines and their wakes, because its sign is opposite for these two entities. Therefore, the relative phase of CL-pol SAR provides new light on the problem of operational auto-detection of man-made targets, under high sea state conditions, over large areas.