Ship detection from PolSAR imagery using the hybrid polarimetric autocorrelation matrix

To better utilize the Doppler information in the frequency domain, we develop a new ship detection method using the polarimetric autocorrelation matrix [A]. First, a complete polarimetric autocorrelation difference matrix [AP] is developed based on [A], and an autocorrelation scattering difference parameter ASDP is obtained to characterize the similarity between [A] and [AP]. Then, a hybrid polarimetric autocorrelation matrix [HA] is constructed based on [A], [AP], and ASDP. Finally, by fusing the feature “1-ASDP” and the total power detector SPANHA from [HA], a new ship detection method SPANASDP is obtained. Experiments on RADARSAT-2 and GaoFen-3 data show that SPANASDP has good ship detection performance.