Measurement of Sea Surface Wind Direction Using Bistatic High-Frequency Radar

A method for extracting sea surface wind direction information from bistatic high-frequency (HF) radar Doppler spectra is presented. By analogy to the monostatic case, the ratio of the intensities of the positive and negative bistatic Bragg peaks is used to derive the (ambiguous) wind direction. For bistatic operation, the reference is taken with respect to the scattering ellipse normal rather than the radar beam direction. The method is shown to be valid based on simulated bistatic HF radar Doppler spectra. Wind direction is also extracted from the bistatic radar data collected on the Southern China coast. Comparison between the radar-measured wind directions and those obtained from the Advanced Scatterometer shows good agreement.