A New Automatic Ship Wake Detection For Sentinel-1 Imagery

The paper presents an automatic algorithm tackling the problem of ship detection in situations where the ship signature itself is not visible. At this purpose, the algorithm proposed uses a combination of image processing techniques in order to identify ships exclusively by detecting the wakes they leave behind. Once a ship is identified, its position in the image, its heading and its speed are determined. The algorithm was developed and tested on SAR imagery from the European Space Agency (ESA) mission Sentinel-1. Here the algorithm's design and testing results are presented and its performance discussed with regard to the overall ship detection and the wake's components recognition. The algorithm resulted in a correct ship detection in 95% of the cases tested and in a correct recognition of the wakes' components in more than 80% of the cases analysed.