Sea State Retrieval from Sentinel-1 Imagery as Support of Maritime Situation Awareness

The algorithms recently developed for extraction of maritime information from Synthetic Aperture Radar are integrated into a prototype processor for Sentinel-1 imagery. The DLR Ground Station Neustrelitz applies this prototype as part of a near real-time demonstrator service which involves daily provision of surface wind and sea state parameters estimated fully automatically from S-1 Interferometric Wide Swath images of North and Baltic Sea. For sea state estimation a new empirical model function was implemented which allows direct wave height estimation form image spectra independent of whether wave patterns are imaged in SAR scenes or they are merely imaged as noise.