Backscattered fields from one-dimensional time-varying Gerstners sea surface are calculated utilising the secondorder small slope approximation. It is well known that spectral properties of the backscattered echoes relate to the velocity of the small elementary scatterers on sea surface profiles. Therefore, modeling Doppler spectra from the ocean requires an accurate description of the sea surface motion. The profile of nonlinear Gerstners sea surface shows verticalskewness of sea waves, it is sharper at the crest and flatter at the trough than linear waves, and its maximum slope position is closer to the crest than to the trough. Furthermore, the horizontal component of the small elementary scatterers orbit velocity on the sea surface, which yields noticeable influence on Doppler spectra, can be obtained conveniently by Gerstners sea surface model. In this study the characteristics of Doppler spectra of backscattered fields from time-varying Gerstners sea surface are investigated and the dependences of the Doppler frequency and the Doppler bandwidth on the parameters, such as the wind speed, the radar frequency, the incident angle, etc. are discussed. It is shown that the Doppler bandwidth of microwave scattered fields from Gerstners sea surface is considerably broadened. For the case of high frequency backscattered fields, the values of the higher-order spectrum peaks are larger than those obtained by linear sea surface.
Based on the first order small slope approximation theory （SSA-I） for oceanic surface electromagnetic scattering, this paper predicts the Doppler shifts induced by wave displacements. Theoretical results from three distinct hydrody- namic models are compared： a linear model, the nonlinear Barrick model, and the nonlinear Creamer model. Meanwhile, the predicted Doppler shifts are also compared with the results associated to the resonant Bragg waves and the so-called long waves in the framework of the two-scale model. The dependences of the predicted Doppler shifts on the incident angle, the radar frequency, and the wind speed are discussed. At large incident angles, the predicted Doppler shifts for the linear and nonlinear Barrick models are found to be insensitive to the wind speed and this phenomenon is not coincident with the experimental data. The conclusions obtained in this paper are promising for better understanding the properties of time dependent radar echoes from oceanic surfaces.
It is well known that the sea return echo contains contributions from at least two scattering mechanisms. In addition to the resonant Bragg scattering, the specular point scattering plays an important role as the incidence angle becomes smaller （≥ 20°）. Here, in combination with the Kirchhoff integral equation of scattering field and the stationary phase approximation, analytical expressions for Doppler shift and spectral bandwidth of specular point scattering, which are insensitive to the polarization state, are derived theoretically. For comparison, the simulated results related to the two-scale method （TSM） and the method of moment （MOM） are also presented. It is found that the Doppler shift and the spectral bandwidth given by TSM are insufficient at small incidence angles. However, a comparison between the analytical results and the numerical simulations by MOM in the backscatter configuration shows that our proposed formulas are valid for the specular point scattering case. In this work, the dependences of the predicted results on incidence angle, radar frequency, and wind speed are also discussed. The obtained conclusions seem promising for a better understanding of the Doppler spectra of the specular point scattering fields from time-varying sea surfaces.
