Contribution of ocean wave third-order statistics to the radar backscatter modulation by internal waves

Inhalt:
Modulation model of radar backscatters is an important section in the remote sensing of oceanic internal wave by synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Published papers related with the modulation models were analyzed mainly based on the hypothesis that ocean surface waves are Gaussian distributed. However, this is not always true for the complicated ocean environment. Researches have showed that the measurements are usually bigger than the values predicted by modulation models for the high frequency radars (X-band and above). A new modulation model was proposed which takes the third-order statistics of the ocean surface into account. It takes the situation into consideration that the surface waves are Non-Gaussian distributed under some conditions. In this paper, this model was verified by the experimental measurements recorded in a wind wave tank. Further discussion was made about applicability of this model that it performs better compared with the traditional modulation model for the high frequency band radar.