Ocean Monitoring with SAR: An Overview

Abstract—In this paper an overview of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) applications for the monitoring of the ocean surface is presented. In particular, the necessity of adequate direct models for the description of the sea surface and of its interaction with the incident electromagnetic field is stressed and suitable models are introduced. Based on the introduced models, two main applications are analyzed in detail, i.e. the monitoring of oil slicks on the sea surface and the mitigation of azimuth ambiguities, which is crucial in support of ship-detection applications. Keywords—Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), electromagnetic modeling