Comparison of Sentinel-1 and TerraSAR-X for ship detection

Sentinel-1A (S1-A) is the first of a pair of satellites operating a C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) developed to give continuity to the European SAR programme. After 6 months commissioning phase from its lunch on April 3rd 2014, S1-A started to systematically deliver data to Copernicus Ocean, Land and Emergency services. Interferometric Wide Swath (IWS) mode in dual-polarization VV+VH is the standard acquisition mode used for the observation of the European marine environment. The objectives of this study are the comparison and synergetic use of the S1-A imagery in IWS mode with TerraSAR-X (TS-X) imagery in StripMap mode for SAR ship detection application. Exemplary dataset acquired over the English Channel during a controlled experiment is used to pursue the objective. Automatic Identification System ships messages received by terrestrial stations in the area are used as ground truth and to identify the SAR detections.