Detection of ships moving in a straight line and turning with implications for wide area surveillance

Abstract

Wide Area Surveillance refers to the continuous monitoring and tracking of the earth's surface, using Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR) on air and space-borne satellites. The present work is an application of the same for maritime ship detection in the sea. The wake is a rich source of information about the ship's particulars. Current research shows that CFD studies predict ship wakes and thus have a role in the ship detection process. We find that all cases of ship detection can be done with this technique with less than 7% error. The study has been further extended to look at the case of a ship turning. This is the first study to establish with evidence the effect of turning ship wakes on detection and we find it to be applicable to 6% error. Further work is needed to determine the practicality of this approach for the Navy by employing SAR images.

Keywords

• Wide Area Surveillance (WAS)
• Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR)
• Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
• Ship beam and wake signature