Data acquisition of vessel ISAR data with assistance of automatic identification system

In the past, imaging of moving vehicles using the principle of inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) has typically been applied to ground moving vehicles or air and space borne objects. Nowadays, demands to image moving vessels on sea come along for both military applications and coastal surveillance. New processing algorithms have to be developed to focus ISAR data of vessels because of the complicated three-dimensional rotational motion and the sea clutter. Experimental data have to be available for the development process. To be able to acquire these data, the airborne radar sensor PAMIR of Fraunhofer FHR has been extended by integrating a receiver for automatic identification system (AIS) messages, which supports the system with position information of the vessels on sea. The paper shows the hardware integration and software implementation. Benefits of the information gained from the received AIS messages are discussed and results of first acquired data are presented.