Goals of maritime and coastal surveillance
Ships detection by maritime radars Architectures and signal processing

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 function for ships or aircraft;

• hostile or offending vessel entering an area requiring special surveillance (port, strait, proximity of a...