Sea target detection using spaceborne GNSS-R delay-doppler maps: theory and experimental proof of concept using TDS-1 data

• Published in: IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Applied Earth Observations and Remote Sensing
• Main Authors: Di Simone, Alessio, Hyuk, Park, Riccio, Daniele, Camps Carmona, Adriano José
• Other Authors: Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Departament de Física, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Departament de Teoria del Senyal i Comunicacions, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. CTE-CRAE - Grup de Recerca en Ciències i Tecnologies de l'Espai, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. RSLAB - Grup de Recerca en Teledetecció
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria de la telecomunicació::Radiocomunicació i exploració electromagnètica::Satèl·lits i ràdioenllaços; Global Positioning System; Artificial satellites; Oceanography > Equipment and supplies; Constant false alarm rate (CFAR); Global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R); Maritime surveillance; Sea state; Sea target detection; GNSS (Sistema de navegació); Satèl·lits artificials; Oceanografia > Aparells i instruments; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2117/115959; https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTARS.2017.2705350

© 2017 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This study addresses a novel application of global navigation satellite system-reflectometry (GNSS-R) delay-Doppler maps (DDMs), namely sea target detection. In contrast with other competing remote sensing technologies, such as synthetic aperture radar and optical systems, typically exploited in the field of sea target detection, GNSS-R systems could be employed as satellite constellations, so as to fulfill the temporal requirements for near real-time ships and sea ice sheets monitoring. In this study, the revisit time offered by GNSS-R systems is quantitatively evaluated by means of a simulation analysis, in which three different realistic GNSS-R missions are simulated and analyzed. Then, a sea target detection algorithm from spaceborne GNSS-R DDMs is described and assessed. The algorithm is based on a sea clutter compensation step and uses an adaptive threshold to take into account spatial variations in the sea background and/or noise statistics. Finally, the sea target detector algorithm is tested and validated for the first time ever using experimental GNSS-R data from the U.K. TechDemoSat-1 dataset. Performance is assessed by providing the receiver operating characteristic curves, and some preliminary experimental results are presented. Peer Reviewed Postprint (published version)