Estimating Nearshore Bathymetry from X-Band Radar Data

In the last few years a number of land- and ship- based X-band radar systems have been developed to collect information on the sea state, i.e. on the significant wave height as well a s on its spectral distribution. More recently, new techniques have been developed to estimate shallow water bathymetry, by taking into account the effects of depth on the dispersion of gravity waves. This chapter is aimed at reviewing the state of the art of such algorithms and at providing some examples of applications of the most recent technique. It is shown that the accuracy is fairly adequate for shallow water, but it decreases significantly as the depth increases; besides, since the effects of stationary or nearly stationary currents interfere with the analysis, it is necessary to make use of algorithms which can estimate both depth and currents simultaneously.