Improving synthetic aperture radar detection using the automatic identification system

This paper studies a maritime vessel detection method based on the fusion of data obtained from two different sensors, namely a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and an automatic identification system (AIS) embedded in a satellite. In this work we propose a detector that uses the vessel position provided by the AIS system to improve the radar detection performance. The problem is handled by a generalized likelihood ratio test leading to a detector whose test statistics has a simple closed form expression. The distribution of the test statistics under the hypotheses is also determined, allowing theoretical and simulated receiver operational characteristics (ROCs) to be compared. Our results indicate that the proposed method improves detection performance and motivates the joint use of raw radar data with AIS demodulated information for ship detection.