COSMO-SkyMed Staring Spotlight SAR Data for Micro-Motion and Inclination Angle Estimation of Ships by Pixel Tracking and Convex Optimization

Abstract

In past research, the problem of maritime targets detection and motion parameter estimation has been tackled. This new research aims to contribute by estimating the micro-motion of ships while they are anchored in port or stationed at the roadstead for logistic operations. The problem of motion detection of targets is solved using along-track interferometry (ATI) which is observed using two radars spatially distanced by a baseline extended in the azimuth direction. In the case of spaceborne missions, the performing of ATI requests using at least two real-time SAR observations spatially distanced by an along-track baseline. For spotlight spaceborne SAR re-synthesizing two ATI observations from one raw data is a problem because the received electromagnetic bursts are not oversampled for onboard memory space saving and data appears like a white random process. This problem makes appearing interlaced Doppler bands completely disjointed. This phenomenon, after the range-Doppler focusing process, causes decorrelation when considering the ATI interferometric phase information retransmitted by distributed targets. Only small and very coherent targets located within the same radar resolution cell are considered. This paper is proposing a new approach where the micro-motion estimation of ships, occupying thousands of pixels, is measured processing the information given by sub-pixel tracking generated during the coregistration process of two re-synthesized time-domain and partially overlapped sub-apertures generated splitting the raw data observed by a single wide Doppler band staring spotlight (ST) SAR map. The inclination of ships is calculated by low-rank plus sparse decomposition and Radon transform of some region of interest. Experiments are performed processing one set of COSMO-SkyMed ST SAR data.

Ship Velocity Estimation in Airborne Along-Track Interferometric SAR Imagery Based on the Fractional Fourier Transform

“…For the single-channel SAR, the model must be simplified. Compared with (20), the influences of v y0 and a y0 on the chirp rate are ignored in [16]. Hence, the chirp rate of the moving target echo after the range compression for the fore channels is…”

“…Filippo [20] applied pixel tracking and convex optimization to achieve micromotion and inclination angle estimation. Back et al [21] used the Doppler parameter estimation to estimate two-dimensional vessel velocity.…”

An Interrupted Sampling Scattered Wave Deception Jamming Method against Three-Channel SAR GMTI

“…DPCA technique can detect slow moving targets, and ATI technique can acquire velocity of moving targets. Furthermore, ATI technique can obtain the relocated azimuth position of targets which can be used to relocate the moving target to the correct positions and distinguish real moving targets and false targets [5][6][7][8].…”

Towards Automated Ship Detection and Category Recognition from High-Resolution Aerial Images

“…Biondi et al [7][8][9] first utilized the Low-Rank plus Sparse Decomposition (LRSD) algorithm assisted by RT to achieve excellent performance on ship wake detection. The inclination of ships also can be calculated by LRSD and RT for some regions of interest [10].…”