Solving the Inverse Ship Wake Problem Using MASTER and DCS Imagery

Michael Johnson Muhlenberg College 7-27-11

Faculty advisor: Raphael Kudela Mentor: Sherry Palacios

What is the inverse ship wake problem?

This problem refers to the use of imaging equipment to view

a ships wake and then determine that ships dimensions or speed by analyzing wake characteristics.

SAR image: courtesy of SAR Imaging of Ship wakes and Inverse Ship Wake Problem

Bubble Propagation

Raptor in Santa Barbara

Overall Plan
DannyC courtesy of MarineTraffic. com

Objective: Quantify the wake of a ship Collect MASTER and DCS images of ships using the DC-8. Use Gram Schmidt Spectral Sharpening to combine MASTER and DCS

images. Isolate a ships wake and analyze the optical contribution of the bubbles. Quantify the bubbles created by a ship as a function of the ships dimensions and speed.

Photography
Dennis
onboard the

DC-8 6-30-11

Picture from the DC-8, 6-30-11

AIS pre flight image from 6-30-11

Image Refining
Correct Geo referencing by

manually selecting GCPs.

Warp MASTER images using

selected GCPs. (RMS error: 0.995, 4.727)

DCS/MASTER Comparison
Ship 1

DannyC

Spectral Sharpening
MOST IMPORTANT STEP IN THE

PROCESS.
Create a panochromatic image from a

DCS image using band math.

Gram Schmidth Spectral Sharpening

with panochromatic image and warped MASTER image.

Pixel Analysis
Analyze Image Isolate wake from ship in pan sharpened

imagery and analyze each pixels radiance of the 654 nm wavelength

Wake area being analyzed is a 12m by 55m rectangle which comprises around 600 individual pixels

Quantifying Each Pixel

Ex: Bubble Concentration=

(Pixel rad.-Mean ocean rad.)*(1/Max. Wake rad.-Mean ocean rad.))*100

Wake Scores
Wake Scores

Average pixel radiance

created which is a quantification of a ships speed and size.

Spatial Resolution?
Pixel Orientation USS Nimitz: courtesy warplanes.com

Conclusion
This approach seems to have validity in its ability to quantify a ships

wake and hence a ships dimensions and speed. However, more ships need to be viewed and analyzed to create an equation to validate this procedure.

Courtesy: Flickr.com

Future Study
SARP 2012 Automate Wake scoring The creation of modeling software to quantify bubble

entrainment and propeller cavitation as a function of wake scoring. Solve the inverse ship wake problem.

Photo courtesy of DNV.com

Photo courtesy of Mecaflux.com

Acknowledgments
Dr. Raphael Kudela Sherry Palacios
Shawn Kefauver Kyle Cavanaugh Emily Schaller Rick Shetter Nicholas Clinton Dennis Gearhart Bob Billings Roger Johnson NASA NSERC SARP Zhang, X., 2004, Optical influence of ship

wakes, Applied Optics v.43(15), p. 3122-3132.