Introduction to Coastal HF Maritime Surveillance Radars

Abstract This paper presents the main technical characteristics and working performances of coastal maritime surveillance radars, such as low-power High-Frequency Surface Wave Radars (HFSWR) and Over the Horizon Radars (OTHR). These radars have demonstrated to be a cost-effective long-range early-warning sensor for ship detection and tracking in coastal waters, sea channels and passages. In this work, multi-target tracking and data fusion techniques are applied to live-recorded data from a network of oceanographic HFSWR stations installed in Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN), Wellen Radar (WERA) in Ligurian Sea (Mediterranean Sea), CODAR Ocean Sebsorsin and in the German Bight (North Sea). The coastal Imaging Sciences Research (ISR) HFSWR system, Multi-static ISR HF Radar, Ship Classification using Multi-Frequency HF Radar, Coastal HF radar surveillance of pirate boats and Different projects of coastal HF radars for vessels detecting are described. Ship reports from the Automatic Identification System (AIS), recorded from both coastal and satellite Land Earth Stations (LES) are exploited as ground truth information and a methodology is applied to classify the fused tracks and to estimate system performances. Experimental results for all above solutions are presented and discussed, together with an outline for future integration and infrastructures.