Estimation of the phase content of SAR images of the ocean using 2D bispectrum estimation

Phase information is relevant either for detecting and quantifying nonlinearities in a stochastic process or for reconstructing nonminimal phase linear systems. Higher order spectra (contrary to the spectrum) preserve the phase information and consequently can be used for both problems quoted previously. Knowing higher order statistics have already provided good results in sea surface classification, R. Garello et al. (1993), the natural following step is to take into account spatial context, by using the bispectrum in order to study nonlinearities in the SAR mapping process of the ocean surface