On the Problem of the Sea Ice Detection by Orbital Microwave Doppler Radar at the Nadir Sounding

Orbital radars are used to monitor the state of the sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. The backscattering radar cross section (RCS) is used to determine the type of scattering surface. The power of the reflected signal depends on many factors, so the problem of separating sea ice and sea waves is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Remote Sensing
Main Authors: Vladimir Karaev, Yury Titchenko, Maria Panfilova, Kiril Ponur, Maria Ryabkova, Eugeny Meshkov, Dmitry Kovaldov
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2022
Subjects:
Doppler spectrum of the backscattered radar signal
sea ice
sea waves
knife-like antenna beam
kurtosis coefficient
retrieval algorithm
Science
Q
Antarctic
Arctic
Antarc*
Sea ice
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3390/rs14194937
https://doaj.org/article/a734deb4179f436f8bbf54d5f8df8030
Description
Summary:Orbital radars are used to monitor the state of the sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. The backscattering radar cross section (RCS) is used to determine the type of scattering surface. The power of the reflected signal depends on many factors, so the problem of separating sea ice and sea waves is not always unambiguous. Previous research has shown that microwave Doppler radar installed on aircrafts can be used to determine the boundary of sea ice. The width of the Doppler spectrum for wide or knife-like antenna beam depends on the statistical parameters of the reflecting surface, so sea ice and sea waves are easily separated. However, when installing a Doppler radar on a satellite, the spatial resolution becomes extremely low. In this research, we discuss the possibility of improving the spatial resolution by dividing the antenna footprint into elementary scattering cells. To do this, it is proposed to use the original incoherent synthesis procedure, which allows one to determine the dependence of the RCS on the incidence angle for an elementary scattering cell. Numerical modeling was performed and processing of model data confirmed that sea ice and sea waves are separated. The coefficient of kurtosis was used as a criterion in the algorithm. In addition, for sea waves, it is possible to determine the mean square slopes ( mss ) of large-scale waves, compared to the electromagnetic wavelength of sea waves along the sounding direction.

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