Ship detection with Envisat's alternating polarization mode

Abstract

A ship detection algorithm is developed that uses Envisat ASAR imagery in alternating polarisation mode. From airborne data it is shown that of the two co-polarisations, HH is preferred over VV because of a larger ship-to-clutter ratio. Combining the HH and HV images of alternating polarisation mode, it is found that the correlation between the two images effectively reduces the number of false alarms