L. Shemer et al., ESTIMATES OF CURRENTS IN THE NEARSHORE OCEAN REGION USING INTERFEROMETRIC SYNTHETIC APERTURE RADAR, J GEO RES-O, 98(C4), 1993, pp. 7001-7010
Microwave remote sensing of the ocean surface using Synthetic Aperture
Radar (SAR) is of great interest due to its high resolution and the p
otential of nearly instantaneous coverage of large areas. The experien
ce accumulated in ocean imaging by SAR indicates that there are substa
ntial difficulties in interpretation of the obtained images of ocean w
ave systems. Ocean surface currents are almost impossible to obtain fr
om SAR imagery. The present paper reports on measurements of ocean sur
face currents based on imaging of the nearshore regions of the Montere
y Bay using an interferometric SAR. The method is a modification of th
e conventional SAR which employs two spatially separated antennas. Thi
s modification allows one to construct an interferogram from the two c
omplex images obtained by each antenna, which provides direct mapping
of the observed surface velocities. The present results demonstrate th
e advantages of this novel technique in studying nearshore ocean surfa
ce dynamics. In particular, spatial distribution of the longshore curr
ent velocity is presented.