On the Relative Importance of Motion-Related Contributions to the SAR Imaging Mechanism of Ocean Surface Waves

The relative importance of the various motion-related contributions to the SAR imaging mechanism of ocean surface waves is studied by using two-dimensional Monte Carlo simulation techniques. It is shown that for wind waves the often-observed stretching of the peak wavelength and the rotation of the spectral peak toward the range direction is caused by both the degradation in azimuthal resolution and the nonlinearity of the velocity bunching mechanism. The distortion of the SAR image spectrum relative to the ocean wave spectrum due to the degradation in azimuthal resolution is mainly caused by the spread of the radial facet velocities within a SAR resolution cell. The effect of the radial orbital acceleration arising from the long waves of scales larger than a SAR resolution cell on the nonlinearity of the SAR imaging mechanism is small. It is argued that the effect of the wave motions on the SAR imaging mechanism cannot always be reduced to a linear azimuthal low-pass filter acting on the ocean slope spectrum. In those cases where the imaging is nonlinear, the ocean wave spectrum cannot be retrieved from the SAR image spectrum by applying linear inversion techniques. For swell imaging, the nonlinearities are usually less strong because swell spectra have a narrower width than wind spectra. Computer simulations of SAR imaging of fully developed wind seas with different peak wavelengths and propagation directions are presented.