With the launch of altimeter,much effort has been made to develop algorithms on the wind speed and the wave period.By using a large data set of collocated altimeter and buoy measurements,the typical wind speed and wave period algorithms are validated.Based on theoretical argument and the concept of wave age,a semi-empirical algorithm for the wave period is also proposed,which has the wave-period dimension,and explicitly demonstrates the relationships between the wave period and the other variables.It is found that Ku and C band data should be applied simultaneously in order to improve either wind speed or wave period algorithms.The dual-band algorithms proposed by Chen et al.(2002) for the wind speed and Quilfen et al.(2004) for the wave period perform best in terms of a root mean square error in the practical applications.