A detection method for near-ship wakes based on interferometric magnitude, phase and physical shape in ATI-SAR systems

Abstract

ABSTRACTNear-ship wakes approximately form a triangle region on the sea surface, and they differ from the background sea in a wave pattern, wave propagation direction and velocity, and fluid particle orbital motion. The differences are observed by along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar (ATI-SAR) systems, and can be properly measured by the ATI techniques. In this paper, a detection method for near-ship wakes based on interferometric magnitude, phase and physical shape in ATI-SAR systems is proposed. The complex multi-look interferometric information for near-ship wakes is first utilized to detect potential pixels. Then, a cluster algorithm is designed based on the interferometric phase and spatial position characteristics of near-ship wakes. After clustering the detected pixels and performing image close operation, the near-ship wakes, which is the triangular region with a much larger physical area than those of common ships or other false alarms, can be identified. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.