A sea-wave-dynamics monitoring radar based on propagation characteristics of echo signals

As human's marine activities, such as marine aquaculture, ocean shipping and coastal facilities construction, flourished world-widely, it is required to monitor the sea-wave dynamics timely and accurately. The radar introduced in this paper, namely “Sea-wave-dynamics Monitoring and Imaging System (SMIS)”, working in the S-band at the center frequency of 3.1 GHz, is applicable to retrieving sea-wave dynamics. The SMIS emits a Quadrature-Phase-Shift-Keying (QPSK)-modulated sequence and receives the signal echoed by sea surfaces. The Channel Impulse Responses (CIRs) experienced by the received signals are calculated, and based on the CIRs, the so-called delay-concatenated max-power Doppler frequency (DCMPD) spectrum is extracted. A simplified wave model is utilized to retrieve the sea-wave characteristics based on the analysis of the spatial-temporal periodic behavior of the DCMPD spectrum. The SMIS can be used to estimate the three-dimensional wave status, including the wave-height, wave-speed and wave-separation. Experimental valuation of the SMIS' performance has been conducted and the results demonstrate that the estimated sea-wave characteristics are consistent with those observed through a conventional buoy-based monitoring system.