Deterministic Sea Wave Prediction Based on Least Squares With Regularization Algorithm Using Coherent Microwave Radar

Deterministic sea wave prediction (DSWP), which aims to predict instantaneous elevation of the ocean surface, can facilitate the safe implementation of many wave height limited maritime operations. Coherent microwave radar is an emerging tool for accurate wave measurements and could be utilized for the advance of DSWP. To address this issue, a method is proposed to estimate the phase-resolved model coefficients and predict the instantaneous wave elevation using coherent microwave radar. The least square with regularization is adopted to estimate phase-resolved model coefficients from radial velocities of water particles extracted from radar echoes. Then instantaneous wave elevation is predicted according to the linear wave propagation model in terms of phase-resolved model coefficients. Simulation analysis is carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method under long-crested and short-crested sea states. Subsequently, the proposed method is validated using the dataset collected with a coherent S-band radar. The radar-measured wave spectrum is consistent with the WaveRider data. A comparison between the predicted wave elevation at the location of ship and the phase-shifted roll angle are conducted, and the trends are in an agreement with a correlation coefficient 0.69. In addition, the significant wave height derived from the predicted wave elevation is close to that of the buoy. These results indicate that the proposed method is effective for DSWP using coherent microwave radar.