English

Significant Wave Height Estimation Incorporating Second-Order Scattering

Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics 2026-03-19 v1

Abstract

Traditional significant wave height (SWH) estima- tion from HF radar typically relies on spectral analysis of the received radar signals. This process was previously simplified by establishing a linear relationship between SWH and the standard deviation of received HF radar voltages under first- order scattering. Building on this approach, this paper presents a physics-informed regression model that incorporates second- order scattering effects through a quadratic formulation derived from a Neumann expansion. The proposed method is evaluated using HF radar data collected in July 2018 at Argentia, New- foundland, with collocated buoy measurements as ground truth. The model achieves a minimum root-mean-square error (RMSE) of approximately 19 cm.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2603.17116,
  title  = {Significant Wave Height Estimation Incorporating Second-Order Scattering},
  author = {Senal Chandrasekara and Reza Shahidi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.17116},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

5 pages, 6 figures, IEEE conference format. Preprint

R2 v1 2026-07-01T11:25:08.900Z