Bathymetry derived from Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar data

Abstract:
This paper presents the use of Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite data to derive bathymetry, the topography of the sea floor. With the growing efforts in global shipping and offshore constructions like wind parks, the knowledge of bathymetry becomes increasingly important. An automatic algorithm is used to retrieve the peak wavelengths of long swell waves from SAR acquisitions of coastal seas and calculate the bathymetry using the shoaling effect, which leads to waves becoming shorter when approaching shallower waters. The peak wave period, required for solving the dispersion relation, is also automatically retrieved by comparison to existing datasets.