An Analysis of ADCP Wave Directional Distributions with Comparison to Triplet Measurement Techniques Using ADCP and Triplet Data

The ability to accurately resolve wave directional distributions in nature is of crucial importance to such applications as port and harbor monitoring, wave climate modeling, and sediment transport. The ADCP Directional Wave Gauge has the theoretical potential for exceptional directional resolution and accuracy. Wave data from many independent deployments seems to substantiate this potential. The goal of this paper is to characterize the ADCP directional resolution, and place it in perspective with other common methods of measuring directional waves. To that end we have: a) Theoretically modeled the ADCP's array and b) Compared the performance of traditional triplet processing, to array processing using a number of simulated directional distributions.