HFSWR ship trajectory tracking and fusion with AIS using Kalman filter

Doppler frequencies generated by the navigating ship targets may coincide with the first order Doppler spectrum of the sea clutter in high frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR). Therefore, the ship targets fall in this clutter spectrum were usually undetectable by the traditional processing method in HFSWR. In this paper, we introduced a spatial blind filtering method based on oblique projection, which utilized the characteristic difference of ship target and sea clutter returns in spatial directions. Different from the broad beam pattern formed by the conventional digital beamforming technique, the method proposed realized clutter suppressing within the broad beam when the notches are sufficiently dense by blind filtering. The ship target in sea clutter was detected in filed data processing results of HFSWR and it was further verified by the synchronous automatic identification system (AIS) information collected. Those demonstrated that our method can detect the ship targets in sea clutter and this spatial blind filtering technique had a great potential in solving this problem in HFSWR.

This paper demonstrates the benefits that high-frequency surface wave radars (HFSWR) are bringing to maritime safety and security in off-shore activities at over the horizon distances. As a primary means for remote sensing of marine and maritime environment, a network of HFSWRs is deployed in the western part of the Gulf of Guinea and covers an area of over 100 km2. Alongside HFSWRs, usual maritime sensors are utilized for vessel tracking as well, however, only satellite automatic identification systems (SAIS) and land automatic identification systems (LAIS) are capable of covering over the horizon distances. Unfortunately, both LAIS and SAIS require vessel cooperation in order to provide any data, which is often abused by vessels conducting illegal activities. Here, analysis is done in which AIS and HFSWR data are compared in order to identify a pattern of behavior of non–cooperative vessels (vessels with onboard AIS devices turned off) so a proper risk assessment may be achieved. It is shown that typical patterns can be easily recognized for two illegal activities which plague the waters where this study is conducted. Those illegal activities are oil bunkering and piracy, both conducted off-shore and out of the reach of the usual coastal sensors such as X or S band radars. Furthermore, tracks created whilst conducting illegal activities are easily distinguishable from others in the overall operational picture. Additionally, it should be pointed out that numerous vessels are switching off their AIS devices when they leave the coastal regions in order to avoid detection by pirate vessels. This behavior can also be easily recognized and must not be mixed with the illegal activities mentioned above.

In many applications, the interacting multiple model (IMM) estimator provides better performance over the single model Kalman filter (KF). However, there are two high frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) factors which seem to make the IMM estimator less attractive: Firstly, the radar has a very long integration time, up to a few hundred seconds for ship detection; Secondly, the radar has very limited detection capability of maneuvering targets. It is unknown whether the IMM estimator will perform better over an EKF for real time HFSWR. The purpose of this paper is to compare the EKF with the IMM estimator. An optimal noise level and critical value have been found for HFSWR EKF design. The results demonstrated that the IMM estimator does not yield improved performance.

A bistatic high-frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) with both receiving and transmitting stations placed on different ships (platforms) is a new radar system and referred to as shipborne bistatic HFSWR. In this paper, a first-order ocean surface cross section of shipborne bistatic HFSWR was derived. The first-order cross-section models for three different cases, i.e., ships moving with uniform, periodic, and hybrid motion states, respectively, are presented. The corresponding first-order Doppler spectra were simulated, and the spread width of the first-order spectrum was investigated. The simulation results show that the characteristics of the first-order spectrum are similar to those of a shore-based bistatic HFSWR when the transmitting and receiving platforms move in opposite directions. The first-order spectral spread width in the case of platforms with opposite directions is much smaller than that in the case of platforms with the same direction. This finding is useful for reducing HFSWR first-order spectrum spread due to platform motion, thus improving the target detection performance of the shipborne bistatic HFSWR. In addition, periodic oscillation motion of both platforms will cause complex motion-induced peaks in the first-order spectrum, which may be detrimental to target detection and ocean remote sensing. These results have important implications for the application of shipborne bistatic HFSWR.

Land or sea clutter Doppler frequency shift and spectrum spread are traditionally attributed to the radar platform motion relative to the clutter scatterer. However, another spreading mechanism of the clutter Doppler spectrum exists in onshore bistatic high frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR), which is presented in this study. Based on the space-time distribution of the first-order sea clutter in onshore bistatic HFSWR, the spreading model is proposed, which is verified by the simulation and experimental results. It demonstrates that the space-time model would be of fundamental importance to the future experimental investigations, not only of target detection but also of ocean remote sensing with onshore bistatic HFSWR.

A bistatic/monostatic HF surface wave radar (HFSWR) experiment was conducted using both the transmit and receive systems of the HFSWR at Cape Race, Newfoundland and the receive system of the HFSWR at Cape Bonavista, Newfoundland. While the HFSWR at Cape Race operated in the monostatic mode, the transmitter at Cape Race and the receiver at Cape Bonavista were synchronized via the Global Positioning System to operate in the bistatic mode. The results of the experiment show that the range of the clutter return from a specified layer in the ionosphere in the bistatic radar, and the range of the clutter return from the same layer in the monostatic radar follow, approximately, the relationship specified by the Pythagorean theorem, i.e., R=(h/sup 2/+(L/2)/sup 2/)/sup 1/2/, where h is the virtual height of the specified layer in the ionosphere, which is also the range of the clutter return in the monostatic radar case, and L is the separation between the transmitter and receiver in the bistatic configuration. Based on these observations, we calculated the coverage areas of bistatic HFSWR systems for water-entry areas along coastlines. The calculation shows that a bistatic HFSWR system has the potential to significantly improve the nighttime coverage area over a monostatic system, while, approximately, maintaining the same daytime coverage.

Maritime vessel movement prediction: A temporal convolutional network model with optimal look-back window size determination

Due to the incapability of high frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) to detect undercurrent parameters, a new algorithm is proposed to apply a three-dimensional (3D) nonlinear barotropic shallow sea and continental shelf model in coordinate system to the inversion of undercurrent. The calculation domain of this model is the area detected by HFSWR. Considering the benthal topography of the detected area and the ocean dynamic parameters, such as surface current, wind and wave detected by HFSWR, the relation between surface current and undercurrent is established in this model. Accordingly, the undercurrent parameters of corresponding area are obtained. The inversion results agree with the law of ocean dynamics and reproduce the movement of undercurrent.

This paper proposes a new method to estimate the target altitude of an aircraft using high frequency surface wave radar(HFSWR) for the surveillance of the Exclusive Economic Zone. The initial position and velocity in 3-D coordinates are estimated based on quasi-Newton method from a sequence of measurements, this initial values are incorporated for 3-D tracking with the modified iterated extended Kalman filter(IEKF), a multiple model approach is adopted to improve the tracking accuracy. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Maritime traffic pattern extraction is a fundamental and crucial factor for maritime surveillance and anomaly detection. Emerging technologies like Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides multi-dimensional data which is used to construct a maritime traffic model. In this paper, we propose a framework of maritime traffic pattern extraction from vessel AIS information, which learns a traffic pattern using an unsupervised technique, and can be applied on historical Automatic Identification System data. AIS data is a kind of spatio-temporal data that contains information of location data, as well as time stamps. In this way, traffic pattern is described by AIS data. Furthermore, we conduct a simulation experiment that extracts traffic pattern from the AIS data through the unsupervised technique. The proposed framework takes advantage of AIS data, which is a type of the spatiotemporal data that consists of vessel motion information, to perform the experiment. The result shows that the unsupervised framework converts useful information from raw AIS data to effective traffic pattern. The proposed method strongly supports the further research on maritime traffic pattern extraction of AIS data. Besides, an overview of the framework and the unsupervised technique for high-level maritime situation awareness is presented.

Virtual aperture extension of small aperture array has attracted wide attention in high‐frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR). A biologically inspired coupled (BIC) system is employed to virtually extend the array aperture. However, the existing researches on BIC only consider the array signal processing model and do not combine it with actual radar signal principle. To indeed apply the BIC system to HFSWR, two detailed methods which combine the BIC and HFSWR at signal level are proposed. A three‐dimensional signal model of HFSWR considering array processing was established and the entire signal processing was derived. Then, two combination methods, namely fast‐time domain (FTD)‐BIC and slow‐time domain (STD)‐BIC are proposed. The former implements the BIC before fast‐time processing, while the latter implements the BIC before slow‐time processing. The authors demonstrate that they can virtually extend the array aperture without affecting the target detection. Meanwhile, their capabilities in multi‐target scenarios are analysed and satisfactory conclusions are obtained. By numerical simulations and experiments, the array aperture and range‐Doppler (RD) spectrum of the standard HFSWR and BIC‐HFSWR are compared. The results show that while the performance of their RD spectrum is almost the same, BIC‐HFSWR has an enlarged virtual aperture than standard HFSWR.

The radar cross sections (RCS) of both small and large ships for High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR) were studied by using Numerical Electromagnetics Code and by using measurements from a HFSWR system at Cape Race, Newfoundland, Canada. The results of the study indicate that Teleost, a 2405-ton Canadian Coast Guard ship, and large cargo-container vessels (/spl sim/36000 ton) have comparable RCS values at 3.1 and 4.1 MHz. This was verified by comparing Teleost signals with the reflections of seven cargo-container vessels identified during an operational evaluation of the HFSWR. The conclusion of the study is that Teleost and the large cargo-container vessels have an angle-averaged RCS of /spl sim/40dBm/sup 2/, while small vessels (/spl sim/1000 tons) could reasonably be characterized by an angle-averaged RCS of /spl sim/30 dBm/sup 2/, in the lower end of the HF band (3-5 MHz).

Recreational boating is an increasing activity in coastal areas and its spatiotemporal overlap with key habitats of marine species pose a risk for negative noise impacts. Yet, recreational vessels are currently unaccounted for in vessel noise models using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. Here we conduct a case study investigating noise contributions from vessels with and without AIS (non-AIS) in a shallow coastal area within the Inner Danish waters. By tracking vessels with theodolite and AIS, while recording ambient noise levels, we find that non-AIS vessels have a higher occurrence (83%) than AIS vessels, and that motorised recreational vessels can elevate third-octave band noise centred at 0.125, 2 and 16 kHz by 47–51 dB. Accordingly, these vessels dominated the soundscape in the study site due to their high numbers, high speeds and proximity to the coast. Furthermore, recreational vessels caused 49–85% of noise events potentially eliciting behavioural responses in harbour porpoises (AIS vessels caused 5–24%). We therefore conclude that AIS data would poorly predict vessel noise pollution and its impacts in this and other similar marine environments. We suggest to improve vessel noise models and impact assessments by requiring that faster and more powerful recreational vessels carry AIS-transmitters.

Recently, the usage of high frequency surface wave radars has been expanded to monitoring of ships within observable region because it can always observe wide target region with low power consumption. However, ship monitoring systems using high frequency radars suffer from the fact that a detection position is far away from true position. To resolve this problem, the proposed method determines final location by applying Bayesian estimator to detection results from each ship monitoring system in high frequency radar network. According to Bayesian theory, a posterior distribution is factorized into likelihood and prior distributions, and both distributions are modeled by using each detection results and auto-identification system data, respectively. Effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated through appropriate synthetic and real data. From the results, location accuracy can be improved when the proposed method is applied to location estimation.

Assessment of actual detection capabilities obtained with high frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) is a key issue for the global surveillance of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ). ONERA (The French Aerospace Lab) has just finished a ten month trial cycle of its new full digital HFSWR system. This system uses digital signal generation, digital receivers, high computational power workstations and low power transmitters. All results extracted from the trial database are compliant with the theory in particular concerning sea clutter and ionospheric clutter. Moreover, the detection of vessels up to 170 km and aircrafts up to 75 km (results obtained with cooperative targets and ground truth data) shows the over the horizon capabilities of the system. Finally, clutter reduction prospects are also presented.