We usually make use of the wave stripes of the synthetic aperture radar(SAR) imagery to retrieve the ocean wave properties based on the SAR-ocean mapping model. Due to the lower resolution, the ScanSAR mode imagery has no apparent ocean wave stripes but possesses the great advantage of large area of observation. To exert the advantage of ScanSAR imagery, this paper develops the new model to retrieve the significant wave height(SWH) in case of no wave stripes. Firstly, we collect the isochronous

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... wind speed and SWH from buoy according to the ScanSAR imagery. Then we propose the mode expression and debug out the coefficient by the fitting based on the isochronous data. Finally, we use other isochronous data to validate the model. Retrieved SWH have a correlation coefficient of 0.83 and root mean square error(rmse) of 0.33 m with the SWH of buoy. It shows the ScanSAR imagery has the ability of retrieving SWH. Index Terms-ScanSAR imagery, retrieval, significant wave height.