Estimation of Oceanwave Wavenumber and Propagation Direction from Limited Synthetic Aperture Radar Data.

A system for determining wavenumber and propagation direction for the dominant ocean wave component from a few scans of synthetic aperture radar data is described and analyzed. The analysis uses actual synthetic aperture radar data and provides system parameter tradeoffs and statistical performance results. While reasonable estimates of wavenumber and propagation direction are achieved in some cases, the estimates are not sufficiently consistent to be satisfactory over a wide range of cases. The primary problem is one of low signal-to-noise ratio of the radar scan data. Author