Airborne Sar Observation Of Wind Direction Dependence Of Ocean Surface Backscattering

Abstract

The oceanwinds measurement in wide area with high spatial resolution is important to investigate the coastal ocean environment. The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is one of the candidates because of its high spatial resolution. The normalized radar cross section (NRCS) measured by SAR depends on the wind speed and the relative wind direction to radar wave. Usually, after estimation of the relative wind direction by any method, the wind speed is estimated using the NRCS model. The NRCS model has been statistically developed using a lot of pairs of NRCS measured by satellite SARs and wind vector measured/estimated by other method.In this paper, the dependence of NRCS on wind direction is analyzed by an airborne SAR observation in short time. The results are compared with the NRCS models and the airborne scatterometer measurement.