An innovative spaceborne radar concept for global maritime surveillance: Description and performance demonstration

The paper describes an alternative concept to conventional SAR instruments for ship detection over all ocean surfaces. The concept is specifically oriented for ship detection, and not for land or sea imaging. It allows wide swath coverage (as high as 1000 km). It exhibits high detection performances of small ships even in adverse sea states conditions. Its power consumption is reduced allowing a permanent operation all along the orbit. At least, it uses already developed and low cost technologies.