Maritime Surveillance with Dual-Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar

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Canada is a maritime nation, whose economy and general well-being is closely tied to the sea. The accelerating melt of sea ice in the Arctic will increase ship traffic and resource exploitation in Canada's Arctic, as well as extend the iceberg season in eastern Canada. Monitoring Canada's offshore may be done effectively with a radar imaging system, called a synthetic aperture radar or SAR, capable of collecting images in all weather and day or night. Canada's planned Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM) is an orbiting network of satellite-based SARs capable of imaging thousands of hectares of ocean in a single image. As Canada prepares for the launch of the RCM, there is an immediate need to develop operational algorithms that utilize its advanced wide-swath imaging modes to detect and monitor the increasing number of ships and icebergs in Canada's Arctic and east coast oceans. This research will further our understanding of how microwaves scatter from the sea surface, as well as from ships and icebergs, and use this understanding to design detection systems capable of operating in a wide variety of environmental conditions.