Ship Imaging, Detection and Recognition for High-Resolution SAR

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, the continuous improvement in the spatial resolution of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems has necessitated longer synthetic aperture time, creating significant challenges for ship imaging. The long aperture time introduces two major complications. Firstly, micro-motion causes continuous variations in a ship's attitude relative to the SAR platform, including its backscattering characteristics and echo coherence. Secondly, micro-motion induces multi-cycle oscillations in the range history, generating sinusoidal-coupled phase components in the echoes and micro-Doppler effects. The combined influence of time-varying backscattering and micro-Doppler phenomena leads to complicated amplitude-phase modulation in the echoes, resulting in severe defocusing in the reconstructed imagery. Moreover, high resolution alters the statistical properties of both sea surfaces and ship targets, significantly degrading the performance of conventional detection and recognition algorithms. These limitations substantially constrain the operational effectiveness of SAR in maritime security and traffic management applications. Consequently, developing advanced theoretical frameworks and methodologies for the high-resolution SAR imaging of moving ships, along with optimized detection and classification techniques for both coastal and open-ocean scenarios, has emerged as a critical research priority. Such advancements are essential for unlocking the full operational potential of modern SAR systems in maritime remote sensing.

This Special Issue aims to explore advanced methods related to imaging, detection and recognition for ships with complicated motion in high-resolution spaceborne SAR. This subject covers the entire process of ship imaging, detection and recognition in SAR signal processing, aligning with this journal’s focus on remote sensing, signal processing and geospatial AI technologies for maritime monitoring.

This Special Issue covers broad topics, including but not limited to the following:

• System Design: Advanced imaging system/model for maneuvering ship surveillance;
• Imaging Enhancement: Motion estimation, ship imaging, clutter suppression and image despeckling;
• Detection Techniques: Maneuvering ship detection and non-focused ship detection;
• Recognition Methods: Maneuvering ship recognition and AI-based ship recognition;
• Related advances: Wave-height inversion, marine information inversion and real-time processing.

Prof. Dr. Ze Yu
Dr. Jindong Yu 
Prof. Dr. Xiaoqing Wang
Prof. Dr. Lijia Huang
Dr. Frank Zhang
Guest Editors

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