1. Goals of maritime and coastal surveillance

The sheer volume of maritime traffic worldwide, the increase in piracy and illegal immigration, and the need to protect natural and fishery resources are driving a growing demand for ocean and coastal surveillance systems. The objectives of maritime surveillance are civil or military and concern:

• target detection,

• target localization,

• target tracking,

• identification of targets of interest in a given area of maritime space.

Generally speaking, surveillance can encompass several goals by localizing four types of targets:

• non-hostile ,  but dangerous  for the carrier platform. For example, an anti-collision...