Processing of Asar/ap Mode Data for Ship Detection

Ship detection is always a vital section of the marine application of spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR), especially after the launch of ENVISAT in 2002. ASAR’s Alternating Polarization (AP) mode can simultaneously provide two well geo-registered images in different polarization pairs, namely VV/HH, HH/HV, and VV/VH. This dual polarization function can probably help to enhance the ship detection efficiency by SAR images. In this paper, we aimed to find a solution to the fusion schemes of AP data. Because of the property and formats differences between AP Single-Look Complex (APS) and Precision (APP), processors of APS and APP for ship detection were investigated individually. Preliminary results of the proposed processing strategy reveal it can not only largely reduce speckle effects and sea clutters, but can also guarantee the ship detection performance.