Significant Wave Height Estimation without Doppler Spectra

For over sixty years [1], the usual procedure to determine the significant wave height from HF-radar data has been to first form the Doppler spectrum from the received radar data, and then process the result to extract important ocean wave parameters, such as the significant wave height, primary wave period, principal wave direction, or even the full directional ocean wave spectrum. In the current work, we bypass the calculation of the Doppler spectrum and still calculate the significant wave height from the received radar data. The new procedure is based on a change-of-coordinates of the expression for the first-order scatter, from which an expression for the wave height in terms of other parameters is obtained directly. The validity of this expression is tested with field data from which a significant correlation with the significant wave height. as measured independently by a wave buoy is found.