Editorial for Special Issue “Ocean Radar”

Weimin Huang,Biyang Wen,Björn Lund

doi:10.3390/rs11070834

Weimin Huang, Biyang Wen + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11070834

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Abstract

This Special Issue hosts papers related to ocean radars including the high-frequency (HF) surface wave and sky wave radars, X-, L-, K-band marine radars, airborne scatterometers, and altimeter. The topics covered by these papers include sea surface wind, wave and current measurements, new methodologies and quality control schemes for improving the estimation results, clutter and interference classification and detection, and optimal design as well as calibration of the sensors for better performance. Although different problems are tackled in each paper, their ultimate purposes are the same, i.e., to improve the capacity and accuracy of these radars in ocean monitoring.

Highlights

Oceans cover more than 70% of the surface of the Earth
Unlike the QA procedures that use empirical radial velocity and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) thresholds obtained from quantitative analysis of long-term historical data within the HFR coverage, this scheme updates the thresholds iteratively and it can be employed in real-time and delayed-mode
The results presented in this study are relevant to several proposed space missions with Doppler scatterometers, including the Sea Surface KInematics Multiscale (SKIM) concept, which is currently under evaluation by the European Space Agency

Summary

Introduction

Oceans cover more than 70% of the surface of the Earth They play an extremely important role in affecting climate on a global scale, providing survival resources and environments to numerous species, and are the basis of human marine transportation and exploration. It is a worldwide and continually necessary task to understand and monitor oceans. The most widely accepted ocean sensing radars include but are not limited to the high-frequency (HF) surface wave and sky wave radars, microwave marine radars, and laser radar (LIDAR) These “ocean radars” are able to provide sea surface information such as wind, wave, current, hard target, and bathymetry with different spatial and temporal resolutions. They are organized thematically, leading with articles on HF radar (6), scatterometry (2), altimetry, L-band, X-band, and K-band radar (1 each)

Overview of Contributions

Findings

Conclusions