Development and validation of a sea surface fractal model: a project overview

This paper presents the scientific results of a research project funded by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and selected, with other seven projects, by the European Space Agency (ESA) to test and validate the first available Envisat ASAR product data (ASAR Wave Mode), in the framework of the "Calibration/validation program" of the Envisat mission. The research makes use of a dynamic fractal model of the sea surface based on the Weierstrass functions (Berizzi et al. 1999, Berizzi & Dalle Mese 1999) in order to generate different sea situations from very calm to very rippled sea and it aims to validate this sea fractal model through the analysis and processing of synthetic surfaces, real ERS SAR images, and simulated ASAR Envisat data. SAR image fractal models for oceanographic applications based on Fractal Interpolation Functions (FIF's) and fractional Brownian motions (fBm's) (Pesquet-Popescu & Levy-Vehel 2002) have be also considered for testing performances of the proposed fractal analysis algorithms.