Analysis of maritime X-band velocity SAR imagery

Abstract

The velocity synthetic aperture radar (VSAR) algorithm separates the radial velocity components present in a SAR image. These velocity images can be recombined to form an image with the corrected motion or further exploited for the purpose of target detection. The Naval Research Laboratory Multi Aperture Synthetic Aperture Radar (NRL MSAR) is an X-band airborne test bed designed to investigate remote sensing and surveillance applications that exploit multiple along-track phase centers, in particular, applications that require measurement of scene motion. During its inaugural deployment in September 2014, a large amount of maritime data was collected at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and out into the Atlantic Ocean. This paper examines SAR imagery of two boats which have been corrected with VSAR processing and then investigates the statistics of the associated VSAR sea-clutter.