This paper is devoted to the inverse scattering problem to recover a p
eriodic structure by scattered waves measured above the structure. It
is shown that a finite number of incident plane waves is sufficient to
identify the structure. Additionally by a monotonicity principle for
the eigenvalues of the Laplacian some upper bounds of the required num
ber of wavenumbers are presented if a priori information on the height
of the structure is available.