GF-4 Satellite and Automatic Identification System Data Fusion for Ship Tracking

CF-4 satellite, as the first geostationary orbit optical remote sensing satellite with medium resolution, has the abilities to point and stare at a particular sea area for maritime surveillance. The integration of GF-4 image sequence and automatic identification system (AIS) reports has the appealing potential to provide a better maritime situational awareness by tracking ships, especially noncooperative targets. The aim of this letter is to provide a track-level fusion architecture for GF-4 and AIS heterogeneous data based on the characteristics of different data sources to form a consolidated and comprehensive maritime picture. The proposed fusion strategy is tested in the specific area of the East China Sea, and experimental results verify the effectiveness of our method.