Ship detection by ALOS-PALSAR: An overview

In recent years, ship detection by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has attracted much attention mainly because of increasing marine crimes such as piracy and intrusion into territorial waters, and legal need for identifying ships responsible for oil pollution, as well as monitoring ships' traffic and fishing activity. There are several good review articles [e.g., 1], and also ship detection systems commercially available, but still substantial development is required to improve the detection accuracy and decreasing false alarm rate (FAR), in particular for small ships. This paper summarizes the ship detection algorithms by PALSAR (Phased Array L-band SAR) on board of ALOS (Land Observing Satellite) launched by JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) in 2006. The algorithms under consideration include: