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Joint Exploitation of ISAR Autofocus and Wake Patterns for Ship Kinematic Estimation in VHR Spaceborne SAR Images

delete2026-07-13
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PRE
AI
I
Ilaria Nasso
F
Fabrizio Santi
L
Lorenzo Piazzo
D
Debora Pastina
DOI:10.1109/lgrs.2026.3712499delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
This letter addresses ship position and full velocity vector estimation in very high-resolution (VHR) spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging by jointly exploiting inverse SAR (ISAR) processing and wake patterns analysis. A dual-path architecture is proposed. The first path performs ISAR autofocus to put ship images into focus, also providing azimuthal velocity, while vessel heading is obtained by fusing independent ship and wake orientation measurements according to a maximum likelihood criterion, eventually providing radial velocity and ship position. Alternatively, the radial velocity is retrieved from the azimuthal displacement between the ship and its wake, enabling azimuthal velocity to be recovered through an ML-based heading estimate. Such a twofold strategy allows not only for verifying the coherence of the estimates but also ensures kinematic retrieval when ISAR focusing is ill-posed. Validation using VHR SAR data demonstrates the framework’s effectiveness and underscores submeter resolution as a critical prerequisite for joint ISAR and wake-based motion analysis.
Keywords:
Hybrid synthetic aperture radar (SAR)/inverse SAR (ISAR) autofocus
target kinematic estimation
very high-resolution (VHR) spaceborne SAR
wake feature analysis

Journal

I
IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
IF:
4.4
Papers:
486
Citations:
0

Organization

S
sapienza university of rome
Scholars:
2.9K
Papers: 1.1K
Citations: 2
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