Assessment of Wind Direction Estimation Methods from SAR Images

Abstract

Wind information on SAR images are essential to characterize a marine environment in offshore or coastal area. More and more applications require high resolution wind field estimation. In this article, classical wind wave direction estimation methods are reviewed as the spectral or gradient approaches. In addition, a way to enhance the spectral method with the Radon transform is proposed. The aim of this document is to determine which method provides greatest results when the resolution grid is finer. Therefore, the methods accuracy, fidelity and uncertainty are compared through a simulation study, a section with RadarSAT2 data in coastal area and another one with Sentinel-1 measurements in offshore area.

Remote Sensing Systems for Ocean: A Review (Part 2: Active Systems)

“…SAR-based OSW data perform better than the data derived from traditional OSW measuring techniques, particularly in coastal areas [200]. Moreover, OSW direction and speed can be specified at the same time using SAR data [201]. In [202], the efficacy of Geophysical Model Functions (GMFs) in retrieving OSW through the VV-polarized Sentinel-1A SAR data over the Caspian sea was studied [202].…”