Sea surface topography reconstruction from X-band radar images

Abstract. The paper deals with the feasibility study of the sea state monitoring starting from X-band radar images. The exploitation of radar images allows to achieve a global vision of the sea state compared to the local vision given by the usual sensors as the buoys. The processing approach is based on the formulation of problem as an inverse one where starting from the electromagnetic field backscattered by the sea surface, the information about the sea state are retrieved. The reliability of the inversion procedure is shown by processing synthetic and experimental data where particular attention is focussed to the determination of the sea current and speed of the vessel.