Using unmanned aerial systems for observations of water wave characteristics

Abstract

Dominant wave components within a wavefield play key hydrodynamic and morphodynamic processes. Herein, we present a method to detect and measure the parameters of these waves, such as their wavelength, propagation angle and period. Image sequences of the free surface are captured with the use of a commercial unmanned aerial system. A snapshot proper orthogonal decomposition analysis is then applied to the image sequence, and a 2D autocorrelation is performed on the resulting modes. By extracting the mode that is representative of the dominant wave signal, it is then possible to infer the wave properties of the dominant wave. The outlined procedure is applied to ocean swells, wind waves, free surface undulations along a river and propagating ship wakes. Our results demonstrate an improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio of the peak wave signal to ambient noise over the more widely used fast Fourier transform approach.