Estimation of Significant Wave Height From X-Band Marine Radar Images Based on Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition

In this letter, an ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD)-based method is proposed to estimate significant wave height (SWH) from the X-band marine radar sea surface images. First, the data sequence in each radial direction of a radar subimage is decomposed by the EEMD into several intrinsic mode functions (IMFs). A normalization scheme is then applied to the IMFs to obtain their amplitude modulation components. Finally, by adopting a linear model, the SWH is estimated from the sum of the amplitudes from the second to the fifth modes. The method is tested using radar and buoy data collected in a sea trial off the east coast of Canada. The root-mean-square differences with respect to the buoy reference for the SWH estimations using the traditional signal-to-noise-based method, a recent shadowing-based method, and the proposed technique are 0.78, 0.48, and 0.36 m, respectively. The result indicates that the proposed technique produces improvement in the SWH measurements.