Estimation of wave period from pitch and roll of a lidar buoy

Abstract

This work proposes a new wave-period estimation (L-dB) method based on the power-spectral-density (PSD) estimation of pitch and roll motional time series of a Doppler wind lidar buoy under the assumption of small angles (±22 deg) and slow yaw drifts (1 min), and the neglection of translational motion. We revisit the buoy’s simplified two-degrees-of-freedom (2-DoF) motional model and formulate the PSD associated with the eigenaxis tilt of the lidar buoy, which was modelled as a complex-number random process. From this, we present the L-dB method, which estimates the wave period as the average wavelength associated to the cutoff frequency span at which the spectral components drop off L decibels from the peak level. In the framework of the IJmuiden campaign (North Sea, 29 March–17 June 2015), the L-dB method is compared in reference to most common oceanographic wave-period estimation methods by using a TriaxysTM buoy. Parametric analysis showed good agreement (correlation coefficient, ρ = 0.86, root-mean-square error (RMSE) = 0.46 s, and mean difference, MD = 0.02 s) between the proposed L-dB method and the oceanographic zero-crossing method when the threshold L was set at 8 dB.

This research was funded by the Spanish Government and EU Regional Development Funds, ARS project PGC2018-094132-B-I00 and ACTRIS-IMP project GA-871115. The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), KIC InnoEnergy project NEPTUNE (call FP7) supported the measurement campaigns. The Generalitat de Catalunya—AGAUR funded doctoral grant 2020 FISDU 00455 by A. Salcedo-Bosch. CommSensLab-UPC is an Excellence Unit (MDM-2016-0600) funded by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, Spain.

Peer Reviewed

Postprint (published version)