Split-band SAR Interferometry For Vessel Tracking: Application On Sentinel-1 Data

Most recent Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) sensors use wide band signals to achieve metric range resolution. One can take advantage of this wide band to split a single acquisition into sub-bands and generate several lower-resolution images, centered on slightly different frequencies, performing so a SAR spectral analysis. One application of this process is the vessel detection based on spectral coherence analysis. We present a processing technique of vessel detection using SAR data, combining spectral coherence processing and Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) algorithm. The control of open seas areas or marine protected areas (MPAs) is usually performed based on the Automated Identification System (AIS) embarked within most of the vessels. The proposed technique handles a comparison with AIS data allowing to determine the ratio of non-cooperative vessels (or not equipped with AIS) within an area. We performed experiments on SAR data acquired on the Libyan Sea and we compared the results with the ones obtained by the SNAP “Ocean feature” tool, commonly used by the Remote Sensing community.