Study of on and offshore wave fields from Synthetic Aperture Radar images

Abstract

For more than one decade, the scientific developments carried out with spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) have demonstrated that SAR is a reliable remote sensing technique to analyze wave fields on the open ocean. In their so-called image mode, SAR systems on board satellites like ERS-2 or ENVISAT are able to scan ocean areas of 100 x 100 km2 and more with spatial resolutions about 20 x 20 m2. Those SAR images are able to provide information about the spatial variability of 2D wave fields. This work investigates the capabilities of spaceborne SAR to image ocean waves for those areas close to coastal locations, where the incoming wave fields show strong spatial inhomogeneities. Furthermore, the potential of ENVISAT Advanced SAR (ASAR) capability to scan the ocean surface with dual polarizations is as well analyzed. The relevance of these investigations for different practical applications concerning the analysis of ocean waves is discussed.