NASTaR: NovaSAR Automated Ship Target Recognition Dataset

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Abstract

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) offers a unique capability for all-weather, space-based maritime activity monitoring by capturing and imaging strong reflections from ships at sea. A well-defined challenge in this domain is ship type classification. Due to the high diversity and complexity of ship types, accurate recognition is difficult and typically requires specialized deep learning models. These models, however, depend on large, high-quality ground-truth datasets to achieve robust performance and generalization. Furthermore, the growing variety of SAR satellites operating at different frequencies and spatial resolutions has amplified the need for more annotated datasets to enhance model accuracy. To address this, we present the NovaSAR Automated Ship Target Recognition (NASTaR) dataset. This dataset comprises of 3415 ship patches extracted from NovaSAR S-band imagery, with labels matched to AIS data. It includes distinctive features such as 23 unique classes, inshore/offshore separation, and an auxiliary wake dataset for patches where ship wakes are visible. We validated the dataset applicability across prominent ship-type classification scenarios using benchmark deep learning models. Results demonstrate over 60% accuracy for classifying four major ship types, over 70% for a three-class scenario, more than 75% for distinguishing cargo from tanker ships, and over 87% for identifying fishing vessels. The NASTaR dataset is available at https://doi.org/10.5523/bris.2tfa6x37oerz2lyiw6hp47058, while relevant codes for benchmarking and analysis are available at https://github.com/benyaminhosseiny/nastar.