Refractivity Estimation from Radar Sea Echos

This paper addresses the problem of estimating parameters of the height-dependent index of refraction over the sea surface. The parabolic approximation for numerical solution of the wave equation is used to formulate the forward model. Refractivity estimation is performed by a modified genetic algorithm(MGA). Simulation results are presented which demonstrate the ability of this approach to estimate refractivity parameters with high precision, which is likely to provide an effective method for the estimation of the duct effects from radar sea ehco.