Ocean Surface Current Retrieval Using Doppler Centroid of ERS-1 Raw SAR Data

Extraction of ocean surface current velocity offers important physical oceanographic parameters especially on understanding ocean environment. Although Remote Sensing techniques were highly developed, the investigation of ocean surface current using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is not an easy task. This paper presents the results of ocean surface current observation using Doppler Centroid of ERS-1 SAR data obtained off the coast of Korea peninsula. We employed the concept, in which Doppler frequency shift and the ocean surface current are closely related, to evaluate ocean surface current. Moving targets cause Doppler frequency shift of the back scattered radar waves of SAR, thus the line-of-sight velocity component of the scatters can be evaluated. The Doppler frequency shift can be measured by estimating the difference between Doppler Centroid of raw SAR data and reference Doppler Centroid. Theoretically, the Doppler Centroid is zero; however, squinted antenna which is affected by several physical factors causes Doppler Centroid to be nonzero. The reference Doppler Centroid can be obtained from measurements of sensor trajectory, attitude and Earth model. The estimated Doppler Centroid was compensated by considering the accurate attitude estimation of ERS-1 SAR. We could verify the correspondence between the estimated ocean surface current and observed in-situ data in the error bound.