Multi-Frequency and Multi-Polarisation Analysis of the Scattering From Offshore Wind Turbines

In this study, a scattering analysis of wind turbines is performed using a multi-frequency and multi-polarisation synthetic aperture radar dataset. The latter includes L-, C- and X-band synthetic aperture radar imagery collected by Alos PalSAR-2, Sentinel-1 and PAZ, respectively. Multi-polarization normalized radar cross sections and reflecion symmetry are considered to characterize the backscattering properties of the Robin Rigg offshore wind farm (Solway Firth, UK) turbines, whose features are evaluated with reference to a target-free surrounding sea surface. The experimental results show that the detectability of the wind turbines is severely influenced by the incident wavelength, with the reflection symmetry being a robust and effective parameter to characterize wind turbines. Co-polarized backscattering is always larger than the corresponding cross-polarized one at that HH-polarized backscattering is larger at L-band rather than at X-band, while the C-band VV-polarized backscattering is the lowest. Considering cross-polarized channel, wind turbines call for the largest (lowest) backscattering at X-band (C-band). Results also show that wind turbines are characterized by a correlation between co- and cross-polarized channels much larger than the surrounding sea surface, which satisfies reflection symmetry. In particular, the HH-HV correlation is, on average, larger at X-rather than L-band, while the C-band VV-VH correlation is much lower.