[IEEE IGARSS 2018 - 2018 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium - Valencia (2018.7.22-2018.7.27)] IGARSS 2018 - 2018 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium - Performance Analysis of Time-Frequency Technique for the Detection of Small Ships in SAR Imagery at Large Grazing Angle and Moderate Metocean Conditions

摘要： This paper addresses the performance of time-frequency based techniques for the detection of small ships (length less than 30m) under side-looking synthetic aperture radar (SAR) limiting conditions. The aim of this work is to assess this technique for improving TerraSAR-X (TS-X) near real time (NRT) ship detection service. The goals are achieved by processing both the co-polarized single look complex channels (HH and VV) of TS-X data where ships have been identified by their self-reporting messaging system. The results show that the target-to-clutter ratio does not improve significantly for the detection of small ships under the conditions investigated.