Results of a bistatic HF radar surface wave sea scatter experiment

We describe a set of HF radar sea scatter experiments that test a new digital receiver in both monostatic and bistatic modes. The University of Miami´s OSCR HF radar system was used as a transmitter signal source, and sea echoes were received with both receive systems using different receive antenna arrays. Independent GPS time-coupled rubidium clocks were used to maintain site-pair coherence, and Bragg spectral purity was used as a measure. Expected first order Bragg line characteristics are first discussed that are based on a model (Trizna, 2000): predicted Bragg line NRCS and Doppler shift. With a monostatic transmitter and receive array and a single bistatic transmitter, two different aspects onto the same ocean surface area allows one to estimate current vectors.