VHF Radar Observations of Sea Surface in the Northern Taiwan Strait

Abstract

A VHF pulsed radar system was set up on the Taoyuan County seashore (24°57?58?N, 121°00?30?E; Taiwan) to observe the sea surface in the northern Taiwan Strait for the first time. The radar used a four-element, vertically polarized Yagi antenna to transmit the 52-MHz radar wave. The receiving linear array consists of four vertical dipole antennas that were located 3 m apart and attached with four independent and identical receivers. With the multichannel echoes, the direction of arrival (DOA) of the radar echoes were determined by using an optimization beamforming approach?the Capon method. Echo intensity was observed to vary principally in semidiurnal oscillation, which matched well the time series of tide gauge measurements and sea level simulations. In addition, the oscillatory characteristics of Doppler/radial velocity of the VHF radar were generally consistent with that of the HF coastal ocean dynamics applications radar (CODAR) nearby. Nevertheless, the contributions of various tidal modes to the parameters of DOA, echo intensity, radial velocity, and spectral width, varied with the range and time period (e.g., neap or spring tides). For example, the semidiurnal tides governed the variation in the echo center only in the range interval between ~15 and ~25 km from the seashore but dominated other parameters throughout the detectable range. Correlations and phase relationships between these parameters were diverse; they varied with time and had dramatic changes at around the distances of 3 and 10 km. Possible causes of these features were discussed, including sea surface wind, nearshore current, sea level height, and bathymetric effect.