This paper presents a novel method of sea state characterization using the ‘Variance σ 2 ’ and ‘Fractal Dimension - FD’ criteria which
are applied to experimental Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) one – dimensional signatures (range profiles) in frequency domain. The
above approaches are applicable to normalized mean of backscattered signal from sea surface. This analysis is performed by using
real recorded sea clutter radar data which provided to our research group by SET 215 Working Group on ‘SAR radar techniques’.
The Fractal Dimension criterion uses the ‘blanket’ technique providing sea state characterization from SAR radar range profiles. This
method is based on the calculation of the area of a ‘blanket’, of normalized mean of range profile spectrum. The main idea concern-
ing both ‘Variance’ and ‘Fractal Dimension’ proposed techniques is the fact that SAR radar range profiles corresponding to different
sea states yield different values of variance and fractal dimension, namely ‘turbulent sea’ yields range profiles with larger variance in
time and frequency domain and larger fractal dimension of signal spectrum because of the more ‘anomalous behavior’ of the range
profiles in those cases. As a result, two sea state characterization techniques for two different sea states (turbulent and calm sea)
are presented in this paper.