TY - JOUR
T1 - An HF Software-Defined Radar to Study the Ionosphere
AU - Bostan, Salih Mehmed
AU - Urbina, Julio V.
AU - Mathews, John D.
AU - Bilén, Sven G.
AU - Breakall, James K.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work has been partially supported under NSF Grant AGS 12-41407 to The Pennsylvania State University and AO/SRI International. The data set for this paper is available online (through https://doi.org/10.26208/t2ve-bs23), and for details, please contact Salih Mehmed Bostan (at smbostan@protonmail.com).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - In this paper, a novel design and implementation of a software-defined high-frequency ionospheric radar, the Penn State Ionospheric Radar Imager (PIRI), is described. Furthermore, preliminary results produced by the system (located at 40.71° N, 77.97° W) are presented. PIRI is designed to be a modest and low-cost radar system, which is composed mostly of commercial-off-the-shelf products and utilizing open-source software to perform pulse generation, pulse coding, downconversion, data acquisition, and signal processing. It is designed to be mobile, as it can easily be deployed at temporary locations to study local ionospheric disturbances. For the results presented herein, the radar operating frequency was 5.125 MHz. However, as the system is software defined and short active receive antennas are used, only the transmit antenna needs to be changed to operate over the entire high-frequency (HF) band. The two orthogonal receive antennas enable both linear and circular polarization measurements. Peak transmit power of the system is 500 W. PIRI is designed to be a modest and cost-effective alternative to the current standard HF ionospheric sounding systems and can be readily replicated.
AB - In this paper, a novel design and implementation of a software-defined high-frequency ionospheric radar, the Penn State Ionospheric Radar Imager (PIRI), is described. Furthermore, preliminary results produced by the system (located at 40.71° N, 77.97° W) are presented. PIRI is designed to be a modest and low-cost radar system, which is composed mostly of commercial-off-the-shelf products and utilizing open-source software to perform pulse generation, pulse coding, downconversion, data acquisition, and signal processing. It is designed to be mobile, as it can easily be deployed at temporary locations to study local ionospheric disturbances. For the results presented herein, the radar operating frequency was 5.125 MHz. However, as the system is software defined and short active receive antennas are used, only the transmit antenna needs to be changed to operate over the entire high-frequency (HF) band. The two orthogonal receive antennas enable both linear and circular polarization measurements. Peak transmit power of the system is 500 W. PIRI is designed to be a modest and cost-effective alternative to the current standard HF ionospheric sounding systems and can be readily replicated.
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U2 - 10.1029/2018RS006773
DO - 10.1029/2018RS006773
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85072052366
SN - 0048-6604
VL - 54
SP - 839
EP - 849
JO - Radio Science
JF - Radio Science
IS - 9
ER -