Linear and nonlinear mapping of sea surface waves imaged by synthetic aperture radar

Abstract

Ocean observation is a powerful tool for ocean monitoring of sea surfaces. With the help of SAR it becomes easier to monitor large wave fields. The purpose of this project is to provide a simulator which when given the wind speed and wind direction, to generate the ocean wave field equivalent to those parameters, to simu late the SAR image, and finally to provide the transform for the linear, quasilinear, and nonlinear mapping. In the simulation, an analysis is performed on the validity of the three transforms, where different wind speeds, wind directions, and Slant Range-Velocity ratios β are used. The results, show that the linear and quasilinear transforms can be used when the value is β is low. On the other hand, the non linear transform can always be used, in many different scenarios. Remaining work to be done is an inversion algorithm to extract the ocean parameters from the SAR spectrum, an analysis of the effect of the ocean currents and finally the analysis of nonlinear waves.