Experiments research on ocean surface wave detecting using Streak Tube Imaging Lidar

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can acquire the ocean wave spectrum in the wide-range area, and it can recognize the complicated space structure of the ocean wave. However, because the wavelength of SAR is long, its space resolution is not enough to analyze the micro-scale wave of the ocean surface. In the paper, Streak Tube Imaging Lidar (STIL) is presented firstly to collect the 4-D image (3-D range image + 1-D intensity image) of the ocean surface wave, which has high space resolution and range accuracy. Through analyzing the 4-D image, the variance of height and coarseness of the small-scale wave can be computed. Therefore, the micro-changes of wave are obtained. The experiments were performed in Yellow Sea, China. The results state that STIL can collect the 4-D images of the ocean wave with high accuracy, which can be used to analyze the micro-scale wave.