Ship detection based on the power of the Radarsat-2 polarimetric data

Ship target detection using PolSAR data has been an active research area and many algorithms have been developed in recent years. In this paper, we present a new method based on the difference between the ship pixels and background pixels, using a model similar to LBP (Local Binary Pattern). After that, the polarimetric signature method, namely, the SPAN (total power) detector, is used to detect ships. We adopt one Radarsat-2 data set with four-look processing for experiment, which was obtained in the Strait of Gibraltar ocean area. In comparing with other methods, we find that the result of our method is better than other detectors.