Use of Sentinel-1 data for Maritime Domain Awareness: Preliminary results

In this work the utility of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data acquired from the SAR instrument on-board the recently launched ESA's Sentinel-1 to Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) is studied. The limitations of the currently used Automatic Identification System (AIS) for ships is presented. The use of space based SAR sensors for MDA is discussed and the recently available ESA's Sentinel1 satellite is considered in more detail. An automatic methodology for ship detection from Sentinel-1 is presented and applied in the environmentally important sea straits between Kythera and Elafonisos islands, Southern Greece. Preliminary results show that Sentinel1 has a significant role to play in MDA.