A parametric method of retrieving ocean wave spectra from synthetic aperture radar images

A parametric method that extracts the ocean wave directional spectra from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image is presented. The 180° ambiguity of SAR image and the loss of information beyond the azimuthal cutoff can be overcome with this method. The ocean wave spectra can be obtained from SAR image directly by using iteration inversion mapping method with forward nonlinear mapping. Some numerical experiments have been made by using ERS-1 satellite SAR imagette data. The ocean wave direction retrieved from SAR imagette data is in agreement with the wind direction from the scatterometer data.