Wind speed determination from X-band nautical radar images

A new method is presented for estimation of wind speed from X-band nautical radar sea surface images. Ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) is first applied to the radar data. A normalization scheme is then used to obtain the amplitude modulation (AM) part of the first intrinsic mode function (IMF). Wind speed is determined from a combination of the first IMF and the residual using a logarithmic relationship. The method can be applied to both rain-free and rain-contaminated radar images. Radar and anemometer data collected in a sea trial off the east coast of Canada are employed for the test. Compared to the spectral-analysis-based method, the proposed method improves the wind speed result with an increase of about 0.06 in the correlation coefficient and a decrease of about 0.28 m/s in the root-mean-square (RMS) difference with respect to the reference.