Performance evaluation of Sentinel-1 data in SAR ship detection

This study addresses the performances of ship detection with data acquired by the newly launched Sentinel-1 SAR sensor. An automatic validation approach based on coastal AIS data is employed for measuring the detection efficiency. Results are compared with ship detection capabilities conducted on Radarsat-2 and CosmoSkymed datasets. The influence of different key parameters, such as SAR imaging characteristics (polarization, incidence angle) or meteorological conditions, is addressed. Such an analysis is useful for operational services to determine data specifications that assure optimum vessel detection for maritime surveillance applications.