Features of merchant ship in high-resolution spaceborne SAR imagery

Ship features in high-resolution spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery has crucial significance for ship classification from satellite. In this paper, we discuss the features of merchant Ships including oil tanker, container ship and bulk carrier in SAR imagery, which is comprised of geometrical feature, scattering feature, tonnage information with Radar Cross Section (RCS) and wake. The study show that the ship lengths measured from SAR imagery has a good correlation with the real lengths, but the correlation of ship beam is worse. Ship scattering feature has positive correlation with the ship structure, which maybe is a feature to distinguish container ship from other vessels. A new equation about ship length and its displacement in tons is presented in this paper. The relation suggested by Skolnik M.I between ship tonnage and RCS is tested but not validated. We also validate the means of extracting ship speed by ship turbulence wake in SAR imagery.