SAR-based Ship Detection in Sea Areas Containing

Small Islands
Ziwei Wang1,2, Chao Wang1* , Hong Zhang1, Fan Wang3, Fei Jin3, Lei Xie1,2
1
Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100094 ,China
2
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049 ,China
3
Zhengzhou Institute of Surveying and Mapping, Zhengzhou,China
Email: cwang@ceode.ac.cn

AbstractUsing synthetic aperture radar (SAR) for ship imaging parameters were used in the factors of resolution,
detection is a significant application for maritime monitoring and polarization, and the incidence angle. Different distributions
security. Ship detectors depress the disturbance from the sea are used for the pixel fit test, and the contrast ratios are used for
surface such that the background consistently shows the sea the parameters choice. Finally, a series of improved advices are
pixels. However, in addition to water, the vast sea also contains
proposed for ship detection in an unfamiliar sea area containing
other real objects, of which small islands are the most common.
In this paper, we investigated the detection of ships in a sea area small islands. And a ship-island enhance operator is designed.
containing small islands. Based on the most widely used ship
detector-constant false alarm rate (CFAR), three aspects were
II. EXPERIMENTAL DATA AND CFAR-BASED DETECTOR
selected to investigate the island appearance effect, namely,
image resolution, polarization, and incidence angle. As the result, A. Data Introduction
an output strategy is provided when an island exists, and a ship-
island enhance operator is proposed.

Index TermsShip Detection, SAR, Island

I. INTRODUCTION (HEADING 1)
The detection of ships plays a vital role with regards to
maritime surveillance applications using the synthetic aperture
radar (SAR) system. To date, considerable research has
focused on ship detection. One of the most popular topics is the
Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR)-based ship detector[1].
Moreover, Wang[2] proposed SAR ship detection using human
visual theory, and Tello[3] used the wavelet for ship detection.
Most ship detection researches are based on the assumption
that the background is entirely the sea without any disturbances Fig. 1. Experimental Data. (Red: #1 - #3Green: #4 - #7, Yellow: Lvhua
Island
such as harbors, islands, and icebergs; however, this is not
always the case. Brekke[4] studied ship detection in ice- Table I Experimental Data
infested waters; Amoon M.[5] designed two stages using visual N Inci. on
attention theory when facing extremely large islands during Res.(Azi/ Ba Orbit /
o Sensor Date Lvhua Pol
Rg, m) nd Anten. Pt.
ship detection. Small islands are another significant problem . island
with ship detection. For instance, these types of islands exist all # TerraS 2014 Descending
3.30/2.03 X 34.2 HH
1 AR-X 0116 /Right
over the South China Sea, especially in the southern area. # Sentinel 2015 Descending VH+
Therefore, this paper examines ship detection in sea area 20/20 C 37.3
2 -1 0209 /Right VV
containing small islands. # Radarsa 2013
50/50 C
Descending
33.2 HH
To propose a universal ship detector when small islands 3 t-2 0113 /Right
# Sentinel 2015 Ascending/
appear, CFAR is used as the key detector in this paper. The 4 -1 0221
20/20 C
Right
31.3 VV
existence of small island leads to two problems to CFAR: (1) # Sentinel 2015 Ascending/
20/20 C 31.3 VV
when small islands and ships appear in the same sea area, the 5 -1 0317 Right
background assumption of the sea backscattering is incorrect, # Sentinel 2015
20/20 C
Ascending/
43.2 VV
so the prior distribution cannot fit the background into the 6 -1 0226 Right
# Sentinel 2015 Ascending/
expectation, and false alarms or un-detection may appear; and 7 -1 0322
20/20 C
Right
43.2 VV
(2) when small islands appear in alone the sea area, they may
be disregarded as ships because the backscattering power is As shown in Fig. 1, 7 images are used in this paper; their
typically stronger than that from the sea surface. To estimate parameters are listed in detail in Tab. (I). All of the images
the appearance of small islands, 7 SAR image with different

978-1-4673-7297-8/15/$31.00 2015
c IEEE 591
cover the Lvhua Island sea area, so we assume Lvhua Island is
unknown in the sea chart. #1 to #3 are used to investigate the
resolution effect, #4 to #7 are used for the local incident angle
factor, and the polarization is examined using #2.
B. Pre-processing
First, the images are land masked, and then the DN value is
corrected into sigma naught. For a huge coverage SAR image,
such as ScanSAR or TopSAR, the slant range difference
between the near range position and the far range position is so
high that the backscattering power is affected. Therefore, the
compensation technique [12] is used for images #2 through
#7. For example, the compensation result of #4 is shown in Fig.
2.
Fig. 2 The compensation result of #4. Upper: original image after sigma
naught, Bottom: the compensation result.
C. CFAR
CFAR is the most widely used bright pixel detector for
SAR images. It is based on the different statistical
characteristics between the target and the background. By
presenting a probability false alarm (PFA), the segmentation
threshold is calculated by the prior background distribution.
Therefore, the prior distribution is a significant part of CFAR.
Different backscattering surfaces hold different statistical
information. For the sea surface on a SAR image, an
asymmetric (or non-gauss) distribution is regarded as the best
fit, particularly the K distribution [6]. However, the parameter
estimation of the K distribution is a problem; thus, in some
situations, distributions such as the Log-Gauss, Weibull,
Gamma distributions may also give better results. This study
attempts to find the most stable distribution for ship detection
when islands appear in the background. To quantify the fitness,
the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test (K-S test) is used [7].
CFAR is used to sign the bright pixel position rather than
the ships. Therefore, the discrimination is necessary to remove
the false alarms in the 0-1 segmentation result. In this field,
592 2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)
Wang et al.[8] proposed the use of the kernel density
estimation; Iervolino P.[9] used the clustering technique for the
backscattering estimation; Novak L.[10] utilized the shape and
texture features for the discrimination. Each method targets the
permanent kind of false alarm or a given SAR image. To
estimate the generalized feature for the small islands contained
within the sea area, the method proposed by Novak, which is
the most popular and simplest, is used in this paper.
III. FEATURE ANALYSIS OF SHIP AND ISLANDS
In this section, the small island backscattering feature is
analyzed, and the effect of small islands to the ship detection is
studied in relationship to the image resolution, the polarization
factor, and the local incidence angle.
A. Small Island Features
Fig. 3 The compensation result of #4. (a) original image after sigma naught,
(b) the compensation result.
The small islands in this paper refer to the generalized
concept of islands, including islands with small size, coral reefs,
and composition other than the water. Unlike the extremely
large islands, such as the China Hainan Islands, the size of the
surface of small islands can be affected the tide period, the
wind conditions, and the wave interaction [11]. Therefore, their
position are occasionally erroneous in the sea chart; moreover,
reliable sea charts may not always be obtained when
performing ship detection in an unfamiliar area.
Compared to ships, the size of small islands cannot be
ignored, but small islands do not always possess a sharp
backscattering power as artificial objects because of the
structure. So pixels of the small islands are sharp on the
dihedral angle part and low on the remainder of the image.
Compared to the sea surface, small islands are much brighter
because the surface material difference. Therefore, the mean
pixel values for ships, small islands, and the sea surface are
determined using the following equation:
E{ship} = E{max[small island]}
E{ship} > E{small island} > E{sea surface} (1)
represents the mathematical expectation.
where E{}
The effect of small islands on ship detection mainly
consists of the following two points: (1) when only considering
the sea surface without any other targets, small islands may be
mistaken as ships; (2) when detecting ships in sea areas
containing small islands, their appearance affects the fitness of
the prior distribution, so unexpected results such as un-
detection and mistaken will likely result.
B. Resolution
The data of #1 to #3 in Tab. (I) are used for the resolution
factor investigation. #1 is imaged in the X band by TerraSAR-
X, and the remainder are imaged in the C band from Sentinel-1
and Radarsat-2. The scale of small island is much larger than
the wavelengths of both the X band and C band; therefore, the
effect of the wavelength is ignored.
Fig. 4 K-S test values based on multiple resolutions.
As shown in Fig. 4, the curves gather more from Fig. 4(a)
to Fig. 4(c). This is because the resolution decrease so that
single pixel contains more scatters and the sharp scatters on the
islands will always be merged with whatever holds the lower
power (from the island or the sea). In the resolution level such
as #3, the fitness of small islands contained block is similar to
that of the sea block. Considering the distribution selection, the
Gamma distribution is more stable for #1 and #2; the Weibull
distribution is the best option for #3, but its advantage to the
Gamma distribution is inconspicuous.
(a)
(b) (c)
Fig. 5 Segmentation Result Comparison. (a) #1; (b) #2; (c) #3.
2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)
After CFAR segmentation, the 0-1 value image is
obtained, in which 1 indicates the position of the strong
backscattering pixel and 0 represents the dark. From Fig. 5, it
is clear that in some parts of the island, the backscattering is
high but varies with the resolution. In the high-resolution
image, the density of the pixel is sparse because each scatter is
clearly achieved, which leads to the distinction of ships and
islands. As the resolution decreases from Fig. 5(a)~(c), one
pixel contains more scatters, leading the value 1 pixel that
tends toward block-like objects, not only for ships but also for
islands. In this way, false alarms from the islands appear.
Hence, in aspect of the resolution factor, a larger detection
window is necessary for high resolution detection, and the
ship-island enhance operator is required in low resolution
detection. For distribution selection, Gamma distribution is the
most stable one.
C. Polarization
The polarization of the SAR image is also important for
ship detection. For objects in SAR images, the HH channel and
the VV channel provide the most dihedral angle scattering,
which can be obtained from the Pauli decomposition. Hence, in
this paper, the VV channel is used to represent the co-pol
channel. Additionally, the cross-pol is represented by the VH
channel because of the reflection symmetry.
Similar to the distribution fit test above, the Lvhua Island
area in #2 is used for this comparison when it is known that an
island exists, as shown in Fig. 6.
(a) (b)
Fig. 6 K-S test values between cross-pol and co-pol. (a). cross-pol; (b). co-pol.
From Fig. 6, the K-S values for the different types of slices
between the two polarimetric channels are similar, at least on
the incidence angle of 37.3o. Among the used distributions, the
Gamma distribution is the most stable as the same of the
resolution experiment.
In other research, it was concluded that HH is the more
suitable channel for ship detection in the incidence angle range
of 33o to 45o on the aspect of the ship-sea ratio [13]. The
comparison experiment is processed, as shown in Fig. 7.
The ratio in co-pol is higher than that in cross-pol. The
ship-island ratio in Fig. 7(a) indicates that when ships are
moving around the island area, the co-pol is preferred. The
island-sea ratio in Fig. 7(b) illustrates that for the co-pol
channel, islands are detected as false alarms more easily when
no ships appear. The ship-sea ratio in Fig. 7(c) indicates that
when using the co-pol channel of the no-island area, false
593
alarms decrease when compared to the use of cross-pol. So for
most of the cases, co-pol channel is recommended.
(a) (b) (c)
Fig. 7 Ship significance to different objects. (a) ship-island ratio; (b) island-
sea ratio; (c) ship-sea ratio.
D. Incidence Angle
This section discusses the variation of the incidence angle
to the same island. Data #4 through #7 are used because they
hold close to the satellite flight direction and the same antenna
pointing direction but in different strips. Lvhua Island is used
again with the parameters displayed in Tab. (I).
From the above experiments, a series of strategies are
proposed for ship detection in sea areas containing islands.
Among all the suggestions, the ship-island enhance
operator appears to be a key step for ship detection in low-
resolution SAR image. Next, based on the structure difference
between ships and islands, we propose a ship-island enhance
method.
B. Ship-Island Enhance Method
For small islands, their sizes are much larger than an
extremely large ship. However, none of the island pixels are
sharp, as shown in equation (1). Only the dihedral angle part
causes image disturbances, especially for the low-resolution
SAR images.
Sea Surface
Island
Ship
Side lobe
Sharp Pixel
of Island

(a) (b)
Fig. 10 Ships and Small Islands

Compared to the sharp pixels of a ship, which are

surrounded by the weakest sea surface, medium bright pixels
appear around the sharp pixels from the islands. As shown in
Fig. 10, the difference is obvious in the non-red part of the
Fig. 8 Ship-island ratio in the Lvhua island sea region for different incidence window. Hence, a pixel enhance sliding window similar to a
angles hamming window should be effective. However, for ship
From Fig. 8, the ship-island ratio increases when the local signatures in a SAR image, the side lobe of the sharp pixel will
incidence angle changes from 31.3o to 43.2o. If this trend depress the effect along the azimuth and range direction. The
continues, a larger incidence angle will result in a higher ship- side lobe is a serious problem in SAR imaging; it appears along
island ratio; however, the difference is not great. Therefore, the azimuth and range direction of extremely bright pixels.
comparing to far range position, a ship-island enhance operator Therefore, a diagonal ship-island ratio enhance operator is
is need in the near range position. proposed, as shown in Fig. 11.
IV. IMPROVEMENT OF SHIP DETECTION IN SEA AREAS -1/4 0 0 0 -1/4
CONTAINING ISLANDS
0 0 0 0 0
A. FlowChart
0 0 1 0 0

0 0 0 0 0

-1/4 0 0 0 -1/4
Fig. 11 Ship-Island Enhance Operator

Considering the ship size, the operator is a hollow structure

with the four corners set as -1/4 and the center set as 1. The
radius of the operator is decided by the detected ship size.
As shown in Fig. 12, the operator is used in the Lvhua
Island sea area. In the results of Fig. 12(b), the island pixels are
not completely removed; however, their density is decreased,
which offers a possibility for the discrimination step.
Fig. 9 Flowchart of ship detection in sea area containing small islands

594 2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)


(a) (b)
Fig. 12 Performance of the Ship-Island Enhance Operator
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, SAR image ship detection was investigated in
a sea area containing small islands with regard to resolution,
polarization and incidence angle, and a ship-island enhance
operator was proposed. Higher resolution destroys the statistics
of the sea surface pixels, but it can be overcome by increased
amounts of sea surface pixels. The main challenge is mainly on
low-resolution images because without the details of an object,
the shape of the bright pixels of an island is very similar to that
of ships. For the polarization and incidence angle, ship
detection suffers from islands, especially when cross-pol and
small incidence angles occur. After the experiments, some
strategies were provided to improve ship detection, such as
enlarging the sliding window size for high-resolution images,
using Gamma distribution when considering islands and
applying the ship-island enhance operator. Finally, a ship-
island enhance operator based on the structure difference of
islands and ships was proposed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China under Grants 41331176.
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