Wind Speed Inversion Using Shore-Based UHF Radar

Nearshore wind speed information is important for many research and commercial applications. Shore-based ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) radars promise all-weather, real-time, high temporal, and spatial resolution measurements of nearshore wind. Until now, there have been no reports on the method of measuring wind speed using the shore-based UHF radar. In this article, a method of wind speed extraction from the Bragg peak width of the Doppler spectrum is proposed. Two models describing the relationship between the Bragg peak width and wind speed and direction are developed through theoretical derivation and numerical simulation. One is a combination of logarithmic functions and the other is a combination of power and logarithmic functions. The constants in these models are determined through data fitting. In the inversion process, the wind direction is first estimated, and then the wind direction and the Bragg peak width are substituted into the models to find the wind speed. Using the anemometer data of a buoy as the ground truth, it is proved that the method is feasible and the second model has a better performance with an RMSE of 1 m/s.