A semiempirical method

for the disambiguation of

remote sensed wave spectra
observed by EnviSat
Cristhian Valladares
PhD Jess Portilla

ESCUELA POLITCNICA
NACIONAL

APLICATIONS
Transportation
Wave energy resource assessment

INTRODUCTION

Pressure transducer

Wave Poles

MEASUREMENT METHODS

Wave buoys

MEASUREMENT METHODS

On operation from 1 March 2002 until 9 May

2012

This satellite orbited Earth more than 50000

times, delivered thousands of images and a
wealth of data used to study the workings of
the Earth System.

ENVISAT

Image Mode
Mediumresolution

Antarctic ice
breakup

ADVANCED SYNTHETIC
APERTURE RADAR (ASAR)

SAR ACQUISITION DATA

Imaginary
Spectrum

Real
Spectrum

Buoy
Spectrum

AMBIGUOUS DATA PROBLEM

Level-1 Images
ENVISAT 7x10 km Imagettes

ENVISAT

Acquisition segment in S1 Wave Mode over the Pacific Ocean.

The 42 Wave Mode imagettes are indicated as dots and the
background color stands for total significant wave height as
predicted by Wave Watch 3 (WW3) model run at Ifremer.

inter-look cross spectral

processing

PREVIOUS SOLUTIONS

WAM (wave model)

method

PREVIOUS SOLUTIONS

Problem:

The SAR wave spectra are inherently ambiguous (180)

because these spectra are obtained from a photography
Present methods to process the spectra are not robust
Large amounts of spectra data can not be used

Objective:
To develop an algorithm to disambiguate SAR spectra

Previous Concepts (Partitioning Spectra,

Spectral Statistics)
Track Selection
Noise Signal Analysis
Spectral Statistics (Annual and Monthly)
Starting Point
Closer Comparison Point
Preliminary Results
Conclusions

DISAMBIGUATION OF SAR WAVE SPECTRA

Previous Concepts
Wave Spectrum takes three important parameters:
Direction, Frequency and Energy

WAVE
SPECTRUM

Previous Concepts
This method identifies different wave systems in SPECTRA
the same spectrum.
PARTITIONING
Swell: wind generated waves in a far region
Wind Sea: wind generated waves in the local region

Wave behavior is
presented in a
spectral form
Spectral Statistics
have been collected
over many years
This method helps to
analyze the truth
spectrum

SPECTRAL STATISTICS

TRACK SELECTION

Direction vs Frequency

Partitioning and Polar Plot

NOISE ANALYSIS

Too many partitions

with no significant
values
Partitions produced by a
signal noise

Partitioning and energy partitions

analysis

SOLVING SIGNAL NOISE

Direction vs Frequency
Partitioning and Polar Plot

NOISE ANALYSIS

Spectrum without
significant noise
Clean partitions to be
analyzed

Starting point should be near to the

coastline
This point is visually analyzed

STARTING POINT

Annual Statistics

Monthly Statistics

SPECTRAL
STATISTICS
COMPARISONS

Spectrum
disambiguation
with partitioning
spectrum

DISAMBIGUATION

Spectrum disambiguation with partitioning spectrum

Previous spectrum

The previous disambiguous spectrum and spectral

statistics are used to disambiguate the next spectrum with
the algorithm proposed.

PREVIOUS SPECTRUM COMPARISON

Spectrum
disambiguation
with partitioning
spectrum

PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Spectrum
disambiguation
with partitioning
spectrum

PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Spectrum
disambiguation
with partitioning
spectrum

PRELIMINARY RESULTS

Spectrum
disambiguation
with partitioning
spectrum

PRELIMINARY RESULTS

This method provides a more robust way to solve ambiguous

problem, the algorithm uses spectral statistics, physical
restrains of coastline and a comparison between previous and
next spectrum.
This method can be extrapolated to other tracks in deeper
regions. We can take disambiguated tracks, with the same
method, as a base of analysis in these cases.

CONCLUSIONS