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2006
Conference Paper
Titel
Remote sensing of the sea surface by millimeterwave SAR
Abstract
On several occasions the sea surface has been measured with the mmW radar MEMPHIS in SAR geometry. This research was mainly aimed to investigate the ability of SAR for imaging of disturbances of the water surface at mm-wave radar bands and to gather data on the statistical properties of sea clutter. It can be suspected, that the probability density functions for the reflectivity of sea clutter is as well dependent on the radar wavelength as on resolution, as different scattering processes may significantly contribute. While most of the available millimeterwave data have been collected with a resolution of 75 cm, improvements of the MEMPHIS radar now allow a resolution of about 20 cm. The paper describes the measurement set-up, the evaluation methods and discusses the influence of resolution and radar frequency on sea clutter characteristics as found during the experiments.