The Buckland Park Meteor Radar-Description and Initial Results

Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics, 1977

A brief system description of the University of Illinois meteor radar system is given. The data processing algorithms used in this system are presented and their performance discussed. Example of data recordings are shown illustrating the high data rate of the system. Some observations of wave structures in the meteor radar altitude region are also shown.

1976

The design, development, and first observations of a high power meteor-radar system located near Urbana, Illinois are described. The roughly five-fold increase in usable echo rate compared to other facilities, along with automated digital data processing and interferometry measurement of echo arrival angles, permits unsurpassed observations of tidal structure and shorter period waves. Such observations are discussed. The technique of using echo decay rates to infer density and scale height and the method of inferring wind shear from radial acceleration are examined. An original experiment to test a theory of the Delta-region winter anomaly is presented.

Radio Science, 2007

In the present communication, initial results from the allSKy interferometric METeor (SKiYMET) radar installed at Thumba (8.5°N, 77°E) are presented. The meteor radar system provides hourly zonal and meridional winds in the mesosphere lower thermosphere (MLT) region. The meteor radar measured zonal and meridional winds are compared with nearby MF radar at Tirunalveli (8.7°N, 77.8°E). The present study provided an opportunity to compare the winds measured by the two different techniques, namely, interferometry and spaced antenna drift methods. Simultaneous wind measurements for a total number of 273 days during September 2004 to May 2005 are compared. The comparison showed a very good agreement between these two techniques in the height region 82-90 km and poor agreement above this height region. In general, the zonal winds compare very well as compared to the meridional winds. The observed discrepancies in the wind comparison above 90 km are discussed in the light of existing limitations of both the radars. The detailed analysis revealed the consistency of the measured winds by both the techniques. However, the discrepancies are observed at higher altitudes and are attributed to the contamination of MF radar neutral wind measurements with Equatorial Electro Jet (EEJ) induced inospheric drifts rather than the limitations of the spaced antenna technique. The comparison of diurnal variation of zonal winds above 90 km measured by both the radars is in reasonably good agreement in the absence of EEJ (during local nighttime). It is also been noted that the difference in the zonal wind measurements by both the radars is directly related to the strength of EEJ, which is a noteworthy result from the present study.

Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 2004

2007

We conducted meteor echo observations using the Buckland Park MF radar (35 ffi S, 138 ffi E) at 00:40--05:45LT on October 22, 1997. In addition to the usual full correlation analysis (FCA) technique to measure horizontal wind velocities from 60 to 100 km MF radars have a potential to detect meteor echoes and infer winds through their Doppler frequency shifts. Because of the relatively low radio frequency employed MF radars have a great advantage of providing wind information well above 100 km altitude, where very few techniques can measure wind velocities. There is a limitation which should be noted as well. The observations are possible only during night time when the electron density of E-region is low enough for the radio wave to penetrate into the upper region. We detected 233 underdense meteor echoes from 80 km to 120 km with a mean height of 104.4 km. Although the transmitting antenna beams were steered toward off-zenith angles of 25 ffi , almost all the echoes were receive...

2011

The western-equatorial meteor radar was installed at Kototabang on equatorial (0.20 o LS 100,32 o BT) and has been operational since 2002. It is used for observing meteor as they enter the Earth's atmosphere to provide the wind data profile in both zonal and meridional direction besides meteor echo rate data which have only one wide beam signal transmission vertically. MWR system hardware comprises two main components: The antenna system and feeders, and the radar system itself. The antenna system is typically composed of two-element Yagis for transmission and five 2-element Yagis for reception. The instrument cabinet contains all of the remaining elements of the MWR radar system i.e. the RF components and the data acquisition which equipped with a GPS-locked real time clock for accurate acquisition time stamps. Those mentioned above will be described in this paper about the radar system, along with the details of the experiment and analysis techniques. Also an initial results are presented, indicating the radar produces count rates around thousands meteors per day.

Journal of Geophysical Research, 2000

Earth, Moon, and Planets, 2007

Radio science and meteor physics issues regarding meteor ''head-echo'' observations with high power, large aperture (HPLA) radars, include the frequency and latitude dependency of the observed meteor altitude, speed, and deceleration distributions. We address these issues via the first ever use and analysis of meteor observations from the Poker Flat AMISR (PFISR: 449.3 MHz), Sondrestrom (SRF: 1,290 MHz), and Arecibo (AO: 430 MHz) radars. The PFISR and SRF radars are located near the Arctic Circle while AO is in the tropics. The meteors observed at each radar were detected and analyzed using the same automated FFT periodic micrometeor searching algorithm. Meteor parameters (event altitude, velocity, and deceleration distributions) from all three facilities are compared revealing a clearly defined altitude ''ceiling effect'' in the 1,290 MHz results relative to the 430/449.3 MHz results. This effect is even more striking in that the Arecibo and PFISR distributions are similar even though the two radars are over 2,000 times different in sensitivity and at very different latitudes, thus providing the first statistical evidence that HPLA meteor radar observations are dominated by the incident wavelength, regardless of the other radar parameters. We also offer insights into the meteoroid fragmentation and ''terminal'' process.

Journal Geophysical Research, 2014

An advanced meteor radar, viz, Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) meteor radar (SVU MR)operating at 35.25 MHz, was installed at Sri Venkateswara University (SVU), Tirupati (13.63°N, 79.4°E), India, inAugust 2013 for continuous observations of horizontal winds in the mesosphere and lower thermosphere(MLT). This manuscript describes the purpose of the meteor radar, system configuration, measurementtechniques, its data products, and operating parameters, as well as a comparison of measured mean windsin the MLT with contemporary radars over the Indian region. It is installed close to the Gadanki (13.5°N,79.2°E) mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere (MST) radar tofill the region between 85 and 100 km wherethis radar does not measure winds. The present radarprovides additional information due to its highmeteor detection rate, which results in accurate wind information from 70 to 110 km. As afirst step, wemade a comparison of SVU MR-derived horizontal winds in the MLT region with those measured by similarand different (MST and MF radars) techniques over the Indian region, as well as model (horizontal windmodel 2007) data sets. The comparison showed an exquisite agreement between the overlapping altitudes(82–98 km) of different radars. Zonal winds compared very well, as did the meridional winds. The observeddiscrepancies and limitations in the wind measurement are discussed in the light of different measuringtechniques and the effects of small-scale processes like gravity waves. This new radar is expected to play animportant role in our understanding of the vertical and lateral coupling of different regions of the atmosphere that will be possible when measurements from nearby locations are combined.

International Journal of …, 2003