Detection of Moving Ships Based on a Combination of Magnitude and Phase in Along-Track Interferometric SAR—Part I: SIMP Metric and Its Performance

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), in along-track interferometry mode, is extensively used in sensing oceanic surface. Detecting moving ships is becoming an increasingly important requirement in global monitoring of environment and maritime security. To realize this requirement, we first constructed a metric for detecting moving ships in SAR images by combining sea interferogram's magnitude and phase (SIMP). Second, the performance of the SIMP metric was evaluated through simulations and investigation of several key issues, such as azimuth ambiguity, minimum detectable velocity, and detection performance. The evaluation results establish the effectiveness of the proposed SIMP metric.