Modeling and electromagnetic scattering from the overturning wave crest

Abstract

The presence of sea spikes can cause the radar false alarm probability rise and performance degradation of multi-target environment detection. Therefore, study of the phenomenon of sea spikes is of great significance. HH polarization scattering intensity close to or even greater than the VV polarization scattering intensity is an important feature of sea spike phenomenon. Overturning wave crest is considered to be one of the reasons of generating sea spike. In this paper, overturning wave crest model is introduced with the consideration of the wind speed, and the method of moment is used for studying HH and VV backward scattering coefficient for different incident frequencies, incident angles, wind speeds, and wind directions. It is found that super phenomenon (HH scattering intensity is greater than VV polarization scattering intensity) is more obvious in the cases of low grazing and large wind speed, thus it is deduced that the sea spike phenomenon occurs with a high probability in the case of low grazing angle. Moreover, the distributions of sea clutter amplitude and Doppler spectra are also examined for the overturning wave crest model with low grazing incidence.