Abstract
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH,
VOL. 108,
3205,
9 PP., 2003
doi:10.1029/2002JC001560
On the nonlinear integral transform of an ocean wave spectrum into an along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar image spectrum
Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China
Institute of Oceanography, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
We present a new nonlinear integral transform relating the ocean wave spectrum to the along-track interferometric synthetic
aperture radar (AT-INSAR) image spectrum. The AT-INSAR, which is a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) employing two antennas displaced
along the platform's flight direction, is considered to be a better instrument for imaging ocean waves than the SAR. This
is because the AT-INSAR yields the phase spectrum and not only the amplitude spectrum as with the conventional SAR. While
the SAR and AT-INSAR amplitude spectra depend strongly on the modulation of the normalized radar cross section (NRCS) by the
long ocean waves, which is poorly known, the phase spectrum depends only weakly on this modulation. By measuring the phase
difference between the signals received by both antennas, AT-INSAR measures the radial component of the orbital velocity associated
with the ocean waves, which is related to the ocean wave height field by a well-known transfer function. The nonlinear integral
transform derived in this paper differs from the one previously derived by
Received 22 July 2002; accepted 10 April 2003; published 27 June 2003.
Citation: (2003), On the nonlinear integral transform of an ocean wave spectrum into an along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radar image spectrum, J. Geophys. Res., 108(C6), 3205, doi:10.1029/2002JC001560.
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