Ship Tracking in High-Resolution Range-Compressed Airborne Radar Data Acquired During Linear and Circular Flight Tracks

Ship tracking is a key maritime surveillance requirement. Research on ship tracking using airborne radar platforms is not widely available in the open literature. In this paper, a concept of ship tracking using range-compressed (RC) airborne radar data is proposed. The proposed tracking algorithm is suitable for dense multi-target scenarios. Tracking is performed in the range-Doppler domain where the moving ships may appear out of the clutter region, improving their detectability. A powerful track management system is developed using SQLite database for handling gaps in the target detections and also the false detections. Some simulations and real experimental results from DLR's F-SAR system are provided to prove the concept.