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. The developed empirical algorithm consists of two parts: a first CWAVE_EX (extended CWAVE) part, based on a linear regression approach, and a subsequent machine learning part using the support vector machine (SVM) technique. A series of new data preparation steps (i.e. filtering, denoising) and new features estimated from SAR images are also introduced. The algorithm was tuned and validated using two independent global wave model hindcasts, WaveWatch-3 and MFWAM as well as National Data Buoy Center (NDBC) measurements. The achieved root mean squared errors (RMSE) for CWAVE_EX for the total Hs are 0.60 m for low-resolution modes S1 IW (10 m pixel) and EW (40 m pixel) and 0.35 m for S1 WV and TS-X SM (pixel spacing ca.1–4 m) in comparison to model predictions. The RMSEs of the retrieved wave periods are in the range of 0.45–0.90 s for all of the satellites and models considered. Similarly, the dominant and secondary swell, and wind sea wave height RMSEs are in the range of 0.35–0.80 m. The SVM postprocessing improves the accuracy of the initial results of CWAVE_EX for Hs and reaches an RMSE of 0.25 m for S1 WV. Comparisons to 64 NDBC buoys, collocated at distances shorter than 50 km to S1 WV imagettes worldwide, result in an RMSE of 0.41 m. All results and the methods presented are novel in terms of the accuracy achieved, combining the classical approach with machine learning techniques, and performing an automatic NRT processing of multiparametric sea state fields from L1 data with automatic switching for different satellites and modes. The complete archive of S1 WV