ATI SAR signatures of nearshore ocean breaking waves obtained from field measurements

We present a technique to extract geophysical parameters of nearshore ocean breaking waves (e.g., wave height, wave velocity) from ATI SAR data. The technique exploits the azimuthal shift induced by moving scatterers in SAR imagery. We find that length of the azimuthal streaks are correlated with breaking wave height (correlation coefficient is 0.78) for a range of wave conditions. We also outline a technique for highlighting breaking waves in SAR imagery using the ATI SAR images.