On the Effect of Interferences on X-Band Radar Wave Measurements

X-band radars are in growing use for various oceanographic purposes, providing spatial real-time information about sea state parameters, surface elevations, currents, and bathymetry. Therefore, it is very appealing to use such systems as operational aids to harbour management. In an installation of such a remote sensing system in Haifa Port, consistent radially aligned spikes of brightness randomly distributed with respect to azimuth were identified. These streak noise patterns were found to be interfering with the common approach of oceanographic analysis. Harbour areas are regularly frequented with additional electromagnetic transmissions from other ship and land-based radars, which may serve as a source of such interference. A new approach is proposed for the filtering of such undesirable interference patterns from the X-band radar images. It was verified with comparison to in-situ measurements of a nearby wave buoy. Regardless of the actual source of the corresponding pseudo-wave energy, it was found to be crucial to apply such filtration in order to improve the performance of the standard oceanographic parameter retrieval algorithm. This results in better estimation of the mean sea state parameters towards lower values of the significant wave height. For the commercial WaMoSII system this enhancement was clearly apparent in the improvement of the built-in quality control criteria marks. The developed prepossessing procedure improves the robustness of the directional spectra estimation practically eliminating pseudo-wave energy components. It also extends the system’s capability to measure storm events earlier on, a fact that is of high importance for harbour operational decision making.