Comparisons of different HF ocean surface-wave radar technologies

The HF ocean radar industry offers two main genres of the technology which have some characteristics in common, but which are technically sufficiently different that the customer has a real choice. The crossed loop genre has small antenna footprints, and with the 180° panoramic view can be daisychained to good economic advantage. The cost of these advantages, compared with the phased array genre, is an inherently more noisy system. The crossed loop genre requires long integration times which limit temporal resolution, and a direction-finding procedure that is error-prone. The phased array genre has a narrow beam which limits atmospheric noise, and which gives a comparative advantage in temporal and spatial resolution. Some of the claims of system performance in company literature as well as scientific publications do not have a technical basis.