WERA is a shore-based Remote Ocean Sensing System for measuring ocean currents, waves, and wind over long distances and large areas. WERA produces ocean current maps from ranges of more than 200km offshore with good spatial and temporal resolution.
WERA is manufactured by Helzel Messtechnik of Germany. ASL represents Helzel’s WERA systems in Canada and the United States for sales and service. ASL will support already installed and future WERA systems.
Receive antenna array on Key Biscane (left) and (right) surface current map during the passage of Tropical Storm Henry on the 5th of September 2003 east of Florida. (Data are kindly provided by Prof. Nick Shay at RSMAS)
The measurement principle is based on the fact that the ocean waves reflect the high frequency signals. So a range can be achieved of more than 100 km with a small transmitting power. For the receiving serves an antenna row from 4 to 16 single antennas. The local dissolution of the current measurement lies between 300 m and 3 km.
Listed below are two examples of how the WERA HF Radar system is being used:
