Improved ship detection with airborne polarimetric SAR data

Abstract

The ship-detection performance that can be obtained from polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is compared with that obtained from single-channel SAR data. Statistical decision theory is used to define decision variables that quantify the tradeoff 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 ship-detection performance obtained with polarimetric SAR data is improved compared with that obtained with single-channel SAR data. We also evaluate the results of these algorithms when 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 using polarimetric information is quantified.