Radar cross section dependence on wind speed

YSCAT was an ultrawideband (2-20 GHz), near constant beamwidth scatterometer intended to provide radar cross section measurements at varying radar and environmental parameters. YSCAT was deployed on the CCIW (Canada Center for Inland Waters) tower on Lake Ontario for a period of six months in 1994. Using YSCAT data, this paper reports (1) observance of a "low wind-speed cutoff", the fall-off of /spl sigma//sub 0/ which occurs at low wind speeds, and (2) the results of a fitting 2-component lognormal/Rayleigh combined probability distribution to the observed backscattered power measurements at C-band (5 GHz) and X-band (10 GHz). The observed characteristic trends of the fitted pdf model parameters verses wind speed are shown and discussed.