The SAR is an active microwave imaging sensor, which can work day and night, under all weather conditions, and with a highresolution earth observation capability. It is widely used for ship detection and classification. With the development of the SAR imaging technology, the resolution of the SAR image is becoming higher and higher, thus the robust and efficient ship detection and classification methods are very important for military and civil applications. This paper reviews the current ship detection and classification based on single-polarization SAR images, analyzes their features and shortcomings, and make aprediction of the future developments.

SAR  /  ship target detection  /  ship target classification