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This letter analyzes the problems of imaging small and fast boats with synthetic aperture radar (SAR), which may experience severe defocusing and/or smearing. This situation is encountered, inter alia, in ocean traffic monitoring and surveillance applications where the detection of small and fast vessels is of great interest. The target modeling and impact of moving vessels in SAR images are presented and discussed using simulated results. A matched filter bank is used before applying moving target indication techniques over multichannel SAR images, refocusing the target signal in the azimuth domain and enhancing the detectability of these types of vessels.

Peer Reviewed