Improved ship detection using polarimetric SAR data

Abstract

The improvements in ship detection performance that can be obtained by using polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data as compared to single-channel SAR data are investigated. Statistical decision theory is used to define decision variables that quantify the trade-off between the probability of missed detection and the probability of false alarm; performance is characterized by calculating receiver operating characteristics from single-channel and polarimetric SAR data by using likelihood ratio tests with the Neyman-Pearson criterion. It is shown that improvements in detection performance can be obtained with polarimetric SAR data as compared to single channel SAR data. We evaluate the results of these algorithms applied to single channel, dual channel amplitude only, dual channel with amplitude and phase, and fully polarimetric SAR data of known ships. In this way, the relative improvement in ship detection performance that is realized by introducing polarimetric information is quantified