The wind and wave-induced Doppler shift (WDS) significantly affects the accuracy of ocean surface current fields retrieved from synthetic aperture radar (SAR). Understanding how different factors affect WDS is therefore essential for improving current inversion accuracy. Existing studies have predominantly focused on single-band WDS, mainly in the C-band, while investigations across other radar bands remain limited. In this study, we simulate the dynamic ocean surface height field and velocity field, and the radar backscatter from the ocean surface that includes the effect of breaking waves. Based on the Doppler shift theory of ocean surface motion proposed by Chapron, we develop a WDS simulation model with potential applicability to multiple radar bands. The performance of the model is verified by comparing its results with those from the CDOP, KaDOP and KuMOD models. The correlation coefficient between the proposed model and the CDOP model reaches 0.97, with mean deviation (MD), mean absolute error (MAE), and root-mean-square error (RMSE) not exceeding −2.07 Hz, 3.35 Hz, and 4.49 Hz, respectively. For comparisons with the KaDOP model, the correlation coefficient is 0.93, and the MD, MAE, and RMSE are within −21.23 Hz, 42.37 Hz, and 52.20 Hz. For comparisons with the KuMOD model, the correlation coefficient is 0.98, and the MD, MAE, and RMSE are within −2.60 Hz, 7.13 Hz, and 9.08 Hz. These results demonstrate that the proposed model can effectively predict the WDS for both C-, Ka-, and Ku-band radar returns. Furthermore, we investigate the impacts of radar parameters, including frequency band, polarization, and incidence angle, as well as wind field forcing on WDS, showing the model’s applicability across multiple radar bands. Finally, the proposed model is applied to current retrieval using Sentinel-1 ocean (OCN) data, and the inversion accuracy is assessed against collocated high-frequency (HF) radar observations. The MD, MAE, and RMSE of the current retrieval using the proposed model are −0.04 m/s, 0.26 m/s, and 0.32 m/s, which are close to those from the CDOP-based retrieval (MD, MAE, and RMSE of −0.02 m/s, 0.25 m/s, and 0.30 m/s). These results demonstrate that the proposed model performs well in ocean surface current inversion and shows potential for further application to ocean current retrieval based on radar data across different frequency bands.
Guan et al. (Thu,) studied this question.