Enhanced Ocean Scatterometry

An ocean scatterometer is an active microwave instrument which is designed to determine the normalized radar cross section (NRCS) of the sea surface. Scatterometers transmit pulses towards the sea surface and measure the reflected energy. The primary objective of spaceborne scatterometers is to measure near-surface winds over the ocean. This is...

Surface roughness and breaking wave properties retrieved from polarimetric microwave radar

Ocean surface roughness and wave breaking are the two main contributors of radar backscattering from the ocean surface. The relative weightings of the two contributions vary with the microwave polarization: the VV (vertical transmit vertical receive) is dominated by the Bragg resonance scattering mechanism, and the HH (horizontal transmit...

An analytical model for the description of the full-polarimetric sea surface Doppler signature

This paper describes an analytical model of the full-polarimetric sea surface scattering and Doppler signature. The model combines the small-slope-approximation theory (at the second order) with a weak nonlinear sea surface representation. Such a model is used to examine the variation of the Doppler central frequency/bandwidth and of the...

DopSCAT: A mission concept for simultaneous measurements of marine winds and surface currents

A radar scatterometer operates by transmitting a pulse of microwave energy toward the ocean’s surface and measuring the normalized (per-unit-surface) radar backscatter coefficient (r8). The primary application of scatterometry is the measurement of near-surface ocean winds. By combining r 8 measurements from different azimuth angles, the 10 m...