Estimating MCC Template Size for Ocean Surface Currents Extraction from Sequential SAR Images

Time series of SAR images contain the temporal and spatial variations of the ocean surface current. The maximum cross-correlation (MCC) algorithm can estimate ocean surface current by tracking the same feature in sequential SAR images. The setting of the template size will have an important impact on the estimation accuracy of the ocean surface current. A novel method for estimating the optimal template size is proposed in this paper based on the MCC coefficient, feature displacement and histogram difference. For two sequential SAR images, under the condition that the feature displacement remains stable and the histogram difference meets a certain threshold, the optimal template size is determined according to the local peak of the MCC coefficient. The effectiveness of this method in estimating the sea surface current is proved based on the time series of ENVISAT and ERS images.