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The total mean square slope (mss) of large-scale (in comparison with the scale of radar wavelengths) ocean waves can describe the roughness of the ocean surface. This important parameter has found many applications and can be determined by the dependence of large-scale mss on azimuthal angles. The Surface Waves Investigation and Monitoring instrument onboard the China France Oceanography Satellite (CFOSAT) can provide a 2-D normalized backscattering radar cross section (NRCS) for 2-D global ocean-surface wave detection. In this article, the 2-D NRCS is used to calculate the total large-scale mss via two methods. The first method is constructed from regression, while the second scheme is derived from a three-solution method. Finally, the total large-scale mss is calculated using these methods, and the map of the distribution of the global total mss is presented for the first time. Our results show that the two sources of total large-scale mss obtained are consistent with each other. CFOSAT can provide a 2-D total large-scale mss map and be used as a new data resource for global applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sea surface winds derived from the spaceborne rotating pencil-beam scatterometers, such as the current Chinese Haiyang-2 (HY-2) scatterometers and the Indian SCATSAT-1 scatterometer, are used in a wide range of atmospheric and oceanic applications. One key problem of the pencil-beam scatterometers is the relatively low wind quality in the nadir region, due to the poor azimuth diversity of the nadir-track observations. This article proposes to include the altimeter backscatter measurements in the wind inversion to improve the retrieved wind quality in the nadir region of HY-2B scatterometer (HSCAT). First, empirical model functions are developed to relate the C- and Ku-band altimeter backscatters to the neutral surface winds at 10-m height. Subsequently, the maximum likelihood estimator, which is commonly used to perform wind inversion for satellite scatterometers, is adapted to retrieve winds with simultaneous scatterometer and altimeter measurements. The significance of altimeter measurements in the combined wind inversion is addressed by comparing the cost functions of the combined scatterometer/altimeter wind retrieval and the nominal scatterometer inversion. The experimental results are eventually validated using moored buoy winds and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) model winds, indicating that the inclusion of altimeter backscatters has a positive impact on the wind quality over the HSCAT nadir region. Finally, the potential approaches to further improve the combined scatterometer and altimeter wind inversion are summarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) has proven to be an important tool for the retrieval of ocean surface currents. However, existing spaceborne SAR systems can usually measure only one component of an ocean current vector. In this article, we propose a new concept of dual-look spaceborne SAR system for ocean surface motion remote sensing. The key of the proposed SAR system lies in the use of a technique called intrapulse beam switching (IPBS) implemented by a phased array antenna. One example for the application of the proposed IPBS-based SAR system is its combination with the Doppler centroid anomaly (DCA) method. Through the combination, the DCA method, which in its conventional version can measure only the radial component of a current vector, is generalized to measure full ocean current vectors. A system design example and its performance evaluation demonstrate that the accuracies for ocean surface velocity vector measurement better than 5 cm/s in both azimuth and range, and better than 10° in velocity direction for a mild current, and a swath width of about 100 km, can be achieved. A comparison with other beam-generating schemes indicates that a relatively large swath width, without compromising the current-measuring accuracy, can be achieved by the proposed SAR system with one single antenna array and one single physical output channel—a feature that means a high level of integration which in turn allows for the flexibility to operate this system in multiple SAR modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new algorithm for suppressing azimuth ambiguities when measuring surface currents with an along-track interferometric (ATI) synthetic aperture radar in heterogeneous scenes, such as coastal waters or rivers. The key of the proposed algorithm involves a careful analysis of a parameter called the eigenvalue spectrum entropy (EVSE), which is defined as the entropy of the eigenvalue spectrum of the ATI covariance matrix computed in the Doppler domain. The physical meaning of EVSE is that it serves as a descriptor for the degree to which an unambiguous signal component and an ambiguous one are mixed. With the help of EVSE, azimuth ambiguities can be suppressed. Simulation results demonstrate that as compared with the conventional ATI method without azimuth ambiguity suppression, the proposed algorithm allows for a pronounced improvement in the current measuring accuracy. Other advantages of the proposed algorithm lie in the fact that it is not only adaptive, due to its ability to automatically capture the useful Doppler band whose width and position may both vary for different radar and scene parameters, but it also needs a minimal number of user inputs, making it a quite attractive algorithm for routine implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) raw data simulation for ocean scenes featuring surface waves and currents, an issue which has proven to be of great necessity in preparing for future oceanic SAR missions. In this paper, the inverse Omega-K (IOK) algorithm, which is originally designed for SAR raw data simulation of stationary land scenes, is extended to ocean scenes. To realize such a generalization, endeavors are made in two aspects. First, specially aimed at ocean dynamics of ocean waves and currents, the 2-D spectrum of the SAR signal is derived. Second, to account for the spatial variation of ocean-motion parameters, we adopt a strategy called batch processing, whose basic feature is that a single implementation of the IOK algorithm will simultaneously simulate a collection of ocean-surface backscattering elements that have the same radial velocity. For the proposed simulator, the velocity bunching effect is embodied via making the long-wave radial orbital velocities physically enter the range equation of the SAR raw signal, instead of superimposing this effect onto the reflectivity map. The spread of the facet velocities within one resolution cell enters the raw data through a random perturbation of the local long-wave orbital velocity. The proposed simulator is not only rather accurate due to the fact that, in deriving the range frequency mapping function, no Taylor expansion is made on the range equation, but also much more efficient than its time-domain counterpart. Effectiveness of the proposed simulator is validated by using simulation results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]