Achiri 2018
Achiri 2018
Achiri 2018
Abstract— This paper presents a novel approach to fuse AIS payload [5]. The potential data availability of SAR images
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images and Automatic in S-Band and X-Band in addition to the AIS data provided
Identification System (AIS) data for maritime surveillance. The from the same platform encourage the research community to
procedure consists of four steps. First, ship detection is performed investigate methods and develop algorithms to make best use of
in the SAR image using a Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) these data sets.
algorithm; then feature extraction (ship position, heading and size)
is performed on ships detected in the SAR image, the third step The AIS system was initially developed for ship collision
consists in identifying the detected ships and extracting the same avoidance by broadcasting the ship information to other ships
features from the AIS data. The final step is to feed the fusion and AIS base stations located along coast lines. This
block with both features vectors extracted separately from the information can be dynamic including ship position, heading
SAR and AIS. Here the arithmetic mean function is established. and speed or static including ship name, IMO number and size
The algorithm is tested using simulated SAR images and AIS data. [6].
Preliminary results of the fusion of SAR and AIS data are
presented and discussed. In maritime domain, several algorithms and methods have
been developed for ship detection using SAR data. The most
Keywords—SAR, AIS, ship detection, ship monitoring, data common ship detector algorithm is the CFAR (Constant False
fusion, maritime surveillance. Alarm Rate) detector where the outcomes of the detection stage
can be validated with the AIS data as a ground truth [7].
I. INTRODUCTION However, the AIS data are often not a reliable source of
information because of the presence of some errors and
It is well known that the most efficient and cost-effective uncertainties while reporting ships information, for example,
way of international trade can be done via sea which represents error related to the ship position, heading or simply some data
more than 80% of the global trade [1]. Therefore, ship can be missing in the AIS report [8].
monitoring (including detection and identification) plays a
critical role to improve the security and safety at sea in maritime Because of the aforementioned reasons, we propose a novel
surveillance domain allowing, for example, the reporting of any approach where the AIS data are used as additional source of
illegal activities such as illegal fishing, illegal immigration and information by fusing it with SAR data to improve the security
hijacking. SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar), is an active in maritime monitoring. First, the SAR image is pre-processed,
microwave remote sensing radar system, that can acquire data then the CFAR detector is applied to generate a map of detected
independently from daylight and weather condition [2]. ships. This will be followed by extracting the ship features (the
ship position, heading, length and width) from the map of
In the last decade, maritime surveillance domain has detected ships. These features are then concatenated so that
increased its importance and several new SAR platforms have every ship is represented by one feature vector. The same
been launched recently to enhance the security and safety at sea. features are considered for the AIS data. Vectors of features
For example, in June 2016, the successful launch of the extracted from both sources of information are fed to the fusion
Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite (M3MSat) block where a fusion strategy based on the arithmetic mean
developed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) with the function is implemented [9].
collaboration of the Defense Research and Development
Canada (DRDC) is providing a potential SAR and AIS This paper is organised as follows. Section II outlines the
(Automatic Identification System) data for ship monitoring [3]. methodology and flowchart of the fusion of the SAR and AIS
Similarly, in February 2018, the successful launch of Paz data. This is followed by the preliminary results of the
satellite, the SAR observation Spanish satellite developed by implementation of the algorithm in section III. The conclusions
HisdeSAT started providing a high-resolution X-band SAR and and future work are discussed in section IV.
AIS data [4]. Also, NovaSAR-S mission, a low-cost SAR
satellite developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) II. METHODOLOGY
with the collaboration of Airbus Defense and Space (Airbus
DC) and the support of the UK government will deliver S-Band This section outlines in detail the methodology of the
SAR data for maritime applications in addition to its secondary proposed approach. First, the features extraction from SAR
image and AIS data are presented. This is followed by fusing
A. SAR processing
1) Pre-processing Pre-processing Pre-processing
Pre-processing consists of preparing the SAR image before
applying the detection algorithms. If the input is a Single Look
Complex product, pre-processing includes the calibration step CFAR
where the pixel digital number is converted to a calibrated radar
backscatter coefficient, the generation of the intensity or the
amplitude images, speckle filtering and multi-looking to reduce Feature Feature
the false alarm. Finally, the land masking is applied to consider Extraction Extraction
only the sea pixels. The land masking step is very important
because the ship detector algorithms usually produce high false
rate detection over land area [10].
Ship association
2) CFAR detector
The CFAR detector is the most common SAR-based ship
detector. It is based on two main steps. First the sea clutter is Fusion
modelled by a suitable statistical distribution. Once the sea
clutter is modelled, a threshold value is set in order to have a
constant false alarm rate according to [10]: Outcomes
Fig. 2. Simulated SAR image intensity of the sea clutter in the stripmap Fig. 4. Ship signature after detection with CFAR algorithm and rotation.
mode with 10 ships.
things, it is necessary to evaluate the Doppler shift due to the
TABLE I. THE FUSION RESULTS OF SAR AND AIS DATA FOR 10 radial velocity of the ship in order to improve the current
SHIPS. findings and the technique in general. The authors are now
Position
investigating complex scenarios on both simulated and real data
Heading Length Width sets and comparing different fusion methods.
x y [°] [m] [m]