A novel technique for small ship detection by using MLCC and CFAR from SAR images(WSANE 2009 (Workshop for Space, Aeronautical and Navigational Electronics))

概要

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During the calibration and validation stage of ALOS-PALSAR (Advanced Land Observing Satellite-Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) in 2006, we examined 4 ship detection algorithms including MLCC (Multi-Look Cross-Correlation) which is an useful technique to extract the images of ships embedded in heavy sea clutter. The result was that some boats were detected by thresholding MLCC coherence images under favourable conditions. However, it was also found that MLCC coherence images include correlated noise from sea surface and the threshold method was not suitable to automatically determine the threshold levels corresponding to desired FAR (False Alarm Rate) values. In order to overcome these problems, we propose a new and simple technique of MLCC-CFAR (or Gamma-CFAR). In this method, CFAR (Constant False Alarm Rate) is applied to inter-look coherence images produced by MLCC. We tested this new algorithm using simulation and 4 PALSAR data, and found that the increase of SNR up to about 10dB and the reduction of FAR by 38% on average in comparison with those by the conventional method of thresholding the coherence images. In this papaer, we summarize the MLCC-CFAR algorithm and the experimental results.
2009-10-26