Sea Surface statistical Properties as Measured by Laser Beam Reflections

A new method of laser remote sensing is proposed, based on sensing the sea surface by a narrow laser beam (2-3cm) and analyzing statistically specular reflections. Construction of the angular dependency of the average density of specks versus the aircraft flight horizontal azimuth allows calculation of both intensity and azimuthal properties of the sea surface spectrum. The paper contains the experimental setup and technique, the field measurement data taken onboard an aircraft and the examples of calculated main statistical parameters of sea waves. Their energy-carrying component velocity is found by the mean velocity of an ensemble of specular points at the random sea surface. The surface wave nonlinearity is shown to affect substantially the statistical characteristics measured: mean numbers of specular areas with th given elevation and given slope, arranged along the line of crossing the sea surface by the scanning laser beam. Experimental measurement of a variance in the number of these areas yields a principal possibility to calculate the correlation function of the sea surface without its preliminary modeling.