SAR-based ship detection in sea areas containing small islands

Using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for ship detection is a significant application for maritime monitoring and security. Ship detectors depress the disturbance from the sea surface such that the background consistently shows the sea pixels. However, in addition to water, the vast sea also contains other real objects, of which small islands are the most common. In this paper, we investigated the detection of ships in a sea area containing small islands. Based on the most widely used ship detector-constant false alarm rate (CFAR), three aspects were selected to investigate the island appearance effect, namely, image resolution, polarization, and incidence angle. As the result, an output strategy is provided when an island exists, and a ship-island enhance operator is proposed.