Wave shadowing effects on phase resolved wave spectra estimated from RADAR backscatter: Part 2: The conflation technique and the deconvolution techniques for the mitigation of wave shadowing effects

Abstract

This is the second part of a short two series concerned with wave shadowing which is acknowledged as the primary source of error involved in the estimation of phase resolved sea wave spectra from RADAR backscatter measurement. A new technique termed conflation is introduced that uses multiple RADAR scan data sets to build a multi-segment data set together with a corresponding theoretic model. Using simulation the conflation methodology is compared against the so called spectral averaging technique that is the standard approach for estimating phase resolved wave spectra. Conflation is found to provide superior estimates, in particular making it possible to avoid the need to impose the wave dispersion relationship though an additional computational step as is necessary in spectral averaging. A second technique based upon deconvolution is also introduced for mitigating wave shadowing errors. However because deconvolution is a very mature process well covered in the signal process and linear system theory literature the discussion of this second method is very brief.