Ship surveillance with TerraSAR-X

Brusch S, Lehner S, Fritz T, Soccorsi M, Soloviev A, Van Schie B (2011)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2011

Journal

IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

Book Volume: 49

Pages Range: 1092-1103

Article Number: 5599861

Journal Issue: 3

DOI: 10.1109/TGRS.2010.2071879

Abstract

Ship detection is an important application of global monitoring of environment and security. In order to overcome the limitations by other systems, surveillance with satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is used because of its possibility to provide ship detection at high resolution over wide swaths and in all weather conditions. A new X-band radar onboard the TerraSAR-X (TS-X) satellite gives access to spatial resolution as fine as 1 m. In this paper, first results on the combined use of TS-X ship detection, automatic identification system (AIS), and satellite AIS (SatAIS) is presented. The AIS system is an effective terrestrial method for tracking vessels in real time typically up to 40 km off the coast. SatAIS, as a space-based system, allows almost global coverage for monitoring of ships since not all ships operate their AIS and smaller ships are not equipped with AIS. The system is considered to be of cooperative nature. In this paper, the quality of TS-X images with respect to ship detection is evaluated, and a first assessment of its performance for ship detection is given. The velocity of a moving ship is estimated using complex TS-X data. As test cases, images were acquired over the North Sea, Baltic Sea, Atlantic Ocean, and Pacific Ocean in Stripmap mode with a resolution of 3 m at a coverage of 30 km × 100 km. Simultaneous information on ship positions was available from TS-X and terrestrial as well as SatAIS. First results on the simultaneous superposition of SatAIS and high-resolution radar images are presented. © 2006 IEEE.

Involved external institutions

Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR) / German Aerospace Center

Germany (DE) Nova Southeastern University

United States (USA) (US) LuxSpace S. à r. l.

Luxembourg (LU)

How to cite

APA:

Brusch, S., Lehner, S., Fritz, T., Soccorsi, M., Soloviev, A., & Van Schie, B. (2011). Ship surveillance with TerraSAR-X. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 49(3), 1092-1103. https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2010.2071879

MLA:

Brusch, Stephan, et al. "Ship surveillance with TerraSAR-X." IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing 49.3 (2011): 1092-1103.

BibTeX: Download