Multiparametric sea state fields from synthetic aperture radar for maritime situational awareness

This paper introduces a method for estimating a series of sea state parameters from satellite-borne synthetic aperture radar (SAR). The method was realized in a near real time (NRT) application which allows for the processing of data from different satellites and modes. The algorithm estimates the total significant wave height Hs, dominant and secondary swell and windsea wave heights, first, and second moment wave periods, the mean wave period and the period of wind sea. The algorithm was applied to the Sentinel-1 (S1) C-band Interferometric Wide Swath Mode (IW), Extra Wide (EW) and Wave Mode (WV) Level-1 (L1) products and also extended to X-band TerraSAR-X (TS-X) StripMap (SM) products. The scenes are processed in raster and result in continuous sea state fields, with the exception of S1 WV, where averaged values for sea state parameters for along-orbit imagettes of 20 km × 20 km are presented.