Investigation of ocean waves and currents with PacRim along-track interferometry (ATI)

The investigation of ocean surface waves and current velocity using conventional synthetic aperture radar techniques is not an easy task. Recently, airborne along-track interferometric synthetic aperture radars (AT-INSARs) have been developed, which employ two antennas, which are physically separated along the platform flight path (along track) direction. The two complex images received from two antennas are combined interferometrically into a single complex ATI image. The phase of the resulting complex image is proportional to the radial component of the ocean surface scatterers velocity. This velocity is the sum of the orbital motion of water particles from the swell, phase velocity of the Bragg waves, and ocean currents. We have tested and investigated the ATI data which was collected by the PacRim-I AIRSAR experiment over the Kohala coast, on the northwest shore of the big island of Hawaii. We investigated the ocean wave and current features and have retrieved dominant ocean wave spectrum. This research is a part of the PACRIM-II ATI related research off Ulsan study area, Korea