Study on Estimating the Shape of a Ship by Integrating Radar Images

The image of an object obtained by the radar is not corresponding to its true shape, because the image of an object observed by the radar is receiving an influence such as multiple-reflections and expanded in bearing because of the beam width of a radar. In addition, a radio wave does not hit the entire surface of an object. Therefore, the image of the front side of a ship facing a radar antenna corresponds to its true shape. In this paper, a method to estimate a ship’s shape by means of the integration of the front parts of images obtained from radars is proposed. In addition, a matter, which is observation error of each radar, in using multi-radars, and the process included in the proposed method for solving the matter, are described. As a result of the experiment, the accuracy of about 3degrees in ship’s heading and about 14 meters in length and about 9meters in beam was obtained.