Boat-Wake Statistics at Jensen Beach, Florida

Abstract

Ship/boat wakes are identified in pressure and flow velocity records as chirp signals, which are also known as sweep signals in sonar and radar applications. A chirp is a signal in which the frequency increases or decreases with time. Wakes are analyzed using time-frequency techniques [windowed Fourier transform (WFT), wavelet transform (WT), and instantaneous frequency]. This approach allows for detecting boat wakes and studying their statistics, even in the presence of a relatively strong broad-banded wind-wave background. Time-frequency methods also open a new direction for the statistical description of wakes, which are applicable to the characterization of the wake climate (e.g., for sites with intense boat traffic). The usefulness of the time-frequency analysis on observations collected in 2010 at Jensen Beach, Florida will be demonstrated.