Reconstruction of three-dimensional ship wake by Tiangong-2 interferometric imaging radar altimeter

Monitoring the wakes of ships at sea is one of the important applications of ocean remote sensing. Extraction of ship wake can be done using either synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images or optical images containing ship wake. However, wake detection based on SAR images or optical images can only obtain two-dimensional features of wake, although they are indeed three-dimensional (3D). In this paper, we demonstrate for the first time that 3D Kelvin wake can be retrieved by using the observation data of Tiangong-2 interference imaging radar altimeter (TG2-InIRA). The TG2-InIRAadoptsnear-nadir incidence (1° 8°) and a short interferometric baseline, the acquired images exhibit quite different features from any other SAR images (20°  60°), and the obtained high-quality interferometric phases can be applied to reconstruct the 3D ship wake. The reconstruction method is described in detail along with intermediate and final results presented.