Micro-Motion Estimation of Maritime Targets Using Pixel Tracking in Cosmo-Skymed Synthetic Aperture Radar Data—An Operative Assessment

In this paper, we propose a novel strategy to estimate the micro-motion (m-m) of ships from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. To this end, observe that the problem of motion and m-m detection of targets is usually solved using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) along-track interferometry through tw...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Filippo Biondi, Pia Addabbo, Danilo Orlando, Carmine Clemente
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2019-07-01
Series:Remote Sensing
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/11/14/1637
Description
Summary:In this paper, we propose a novel strategy to estimate the micro-motion (m-m) of ships from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. To this end, observe that the problem of motion and m-m detection of targets is usually solved using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) along-track interferometry through two radars spatially separated by a baseline along the azimuth direction. The approach proposed in this paper for m-m estimation of ships, occupying thousands of pixels, processes the information generated during the coregistration of several re-synthesized time-domain and not overlapped Doppler sub-apertures. Specifically, the SAR products are generated by splitting the raw data according to a temporally small baseline using one single wide-band staring spotlight (ST) SAR image. The predominant vibrational modes of different ships are then estimated. The performance analysis is conducted on one ST SAR image recorded by COSMO-SkyMed satellite system. Finally, the newly proposed approach paves the way for application to the surveillance of land-based industry activities.
ISSN:2072-4292