A Novel CFAR-Based Ship Detection Method Using Range-Compressed Data for Spaceborne SAR System

Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image ship detection is an important tool to ensure the safety of sea areas and improve the efficiency of maritime traffic. Due to the sparse distribution of ships in the vast ocean, many imaging results are redundant. Furthermore, SAR imaging consumes huge computing, storage, and communication resources. The range-compressed data, without azimuth compression calculation, has caught our attention. Nevertheless, the echo energy of the ship is scattered in the azimuth direction, making it difficult to detect. Several deep learning-based methods are proposed, yet their performance is constrained by labeled datasets. As they neglect sea clutter interference, these methods are also impractical. To address these issues, this article proposes a constant false alarm rate (CFAR)-based ship detector for range-compressed SAR data. First, the imaging process of spaceborne SAR signal is reviewed and analyzed. Then, a generalized Gamma distribution (G
$\Gamma $
D)-based sea clutter model is proposed for the SAR range-focused domain. Next, a CFAR-based method for detecting ships in range-compressed SAR data is customized. Finally, experiments are conducted on Sentinel-1 and ERS-2 SAR data. The results show that the proposed sea clutter model has high goodness-of-fit, and the customized CFAR-based method effectively detects ship targets. In summary, ship detection in range-compressed SAR data is very promising research.