Ship Detection in High-Resolution Dual-Polarization SAR Amplitude Images

A constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detecting method for ships in high-resolution dual-polarization synthetic aperture radar (SAR) amplitude images has been proposed in this paper. First, by the production of amplitude images from two polarimetric channels, a novel detector simply called the PMA detector has been constructed. We testified that the PMA detector could improve the signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) and make the discrimination of a ship from clutter more easily. Second, the PMA detector’s statistical model has been described by the well-known distribution when facing complex sea background. The experiments performed on measured dual-polarization TerraSAR-X images demonstrate the good performance of the proposed CFAR detecting method.