Ship Detection Software Based on High-Resolution Algorithms for Primary Signal Processing: From Idea to Implementation in HFSWRs

In recent years, maritime surveillance of ships using High Frequency Surface Wave Radars (HFSWRs) represents very important challenge, where most attention is focused on algorithms for primary signal processing and the implementation of such algorithms to make them applicable in real-time. This paper contains an overview of the high-resolution primary signal processing in HFSWRs, as well as its implementation using C programming language. All the necessary input data and parameters of the algorithms are described, then the way of executing the program, and finally the output data. A real-time operation is achieved thanks to the implementation based on multithreading by improving the existing implementation of the high-resolution range-Doppler map estimation, which is the most computationally demanding task. As a part of software infrastructure, we have developed a set of auxiliary processing components, allowing end-users graphical presentation of processed radar data. We have demonstrated the capabilities of the ship detection software which can be execute on general purpose computers, and where processing can be performed in real-time or subsequently, for the needs of which an additional program has been developed, thus forming a ship detection software package.