A New Synthetic Aperture Radar Ship Detector Based on Clutter Intensity Statistics in Complex Environments

Abstract

In complex environments, the clutter statistical characteristics of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) are inconstant, and the constant detection performance of a false alarm rate (CFAR) detector based on a clutter statistical model is also hard to achieve. As a result, the overestimated threshold leads to a degradation in detection probability. To this end, this paper proposes a SAR ship detector different from CFAR detectors, which is independent of traditional clutter statistical distribution models and the probability of a false alarm (PFA). The proposed detector aims to raise the ship detection probability and alleviate interference from complex environments such as multi-target areas, shores, and breakwaters. It estimates clutter-truncated thresholds based on clutter intensity statistics (CIS). Firstly, three statistical parameters, including the mean, standard deviation, and maximum intensity of background clutter contaminated by outliers, are calculated; secondly, these parameters are utilized to estimate the clutter-truncated threshold using the novel CIS; and finally, the pixel under test is determined according to the CIS detection rule. Compared with CFAR-based algorithms, CIS obtains a high probability of detection in complex environments. As for other aspects, the CIS detector is insensitive to the structure of the detection window, as well as the size. It is also computationally efficient due to its simple calculations. The superiority of the CIS detector is validated on scene-differed SAR images from the DSSDD dataset.