MRI: Development of a Redeployable Spread Spectrum Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) Meteor Radar

MRI：可重新部署扩频多输入多输出 (MIMO) 流星雷达的开发

• 批准号: 1626041
• 负责人: Philip Erickson
• 金额: $ 29.55万
• 依托单位: Northeast Radio Observatory Corp
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-09-01 至 2018-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1626041&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: MRI; Development; Redeployable; Spread; Spectrum

This award provides funding to construct a novel meteor radar instrument called Multistatic Spread Spectrum Meteor Radar (MSMR). The MSMR design is innovative in part because the electronics would be based upon commercial components that would avoid radio wave interference problems. The primary purpose of the application of this new instrument is to study the phenomena of mesospheric dynamics, ionospheric irregularities, and meteoroid influx deposition. The primary aim of the science application using this instrument would be to achieve the measurements of the winds in the mesosphere-lower thermosphere region from 75 to 110 km. Unlike other meteor radar systems, this instrument would be easily transportable, cheap to fabricate, with relatively low power required for any radio transmission. The broader impact of this award is that it would provide an excellent platform for young engineers to gain experience in working with a design structure largely centered around the collection of immense amounts of data that is analyzed on the fly to achieve intermediate data products. Summer students would be supported on this project as well as a postdoctoral scholar that would receive part time support.The radar system will consist of three transmitter antennas and two interferometric receiver antenna fields. A continuous pseudorandom phasecode unique to each transmitter would be utilized for transmission of the radar signals. Because pseudorandom waveforms do not correlate with external radio interference, the system has good rejection of external radio interference. An unqiue property of MSMR that is unlike any existing meteor radars is all of the transmitter antennas of MSMR can be operated on the same frequency band with minimal mutual interference. The radar system can also be used at a smaller peak power than current systems, while utilizing the same average power as a pulsed system. The new innovations make radio licensing easier, as a large radar network will only occupy a portion of the radio spectrum that is equivalent to a single mono-static radar. These new MSMR features allow construction of a dense meteor radar network that can be applied to studies of mesospheric wind fields and trajectories of ablating meteoroids using a significantly larger number of specular meteor echoes than ever before. The radar can also be used to allow observations of field aligned ionospheric irregularities (FAI) without the range-Doppler ambiguity that is an issue for existing pulsed systems. The radar system relies on modern software defined radio hardware, which greatly reduces the complexity of the radar system, with most of the features implemented in software.

该奖项提供资金，以建立一个新的流星雷达仪器称为多基地扩频流星雷达（MSMR）。MSMR的设计是创新的，部分原因是电子设备将基于商业组件，以避免无线电波干扰问题。 应用这一新仪器的主要目的是研究中间层动力学、电离层不规则性和流星体流入沉积现象。使用该仪器进行科学应用的主要目的是测量75至110公里的中间层-低热层区域的风。与其他流星雷达系统不同，这种仪器易于运输，制造成本低，任何无线电传输所需的功率相对较低。该奖项的更广泛的影响是，它将为年轻工程师提供一个极好的平台，让他们在设计结构方面获得经验，该设计结构主要围绕收集大量数据进行分析，以实现中间数据产品。该项目将资助暑期学生和一名博士后学者，后者将获得兼职支持。雷达系统将由三个发射天线和两个干涉接收天线场组成。 每个发射机唯一的连续伪随机相码将用于雷达信号的传输。由于伪随机波形与外部无线电干扰不相关，因此系统具有良好的外部无线电干扰抑制。 与任何现有流星雷达不同的是，MSMR的所有发射机天线都可以在相同的频带上工作，相互干扰最小。该雷达系统还可以在比当前系统更小的峰值功率下使用，同时利用与脉冲系统相同的平均功率。新的创新使无线电许可变得更加容易，因为大型雷达网络只占用相当于单个单基地雷达的无线电频谱的一部分。这些新的MSMR功能允许建设一个密集的流星雷达网络，可应用于研究中间层风场和轨迹的消融流星体使用显着更多的镜面流星回波比以往任何时候。该雷达还可用于观测场向电离层不规则性（FAI），而不会产生距离-多普勒模糊，这是现有脉冲系统的一个问题。雷达系统依赖于现代软件定义的无线电硬件，这大大降低了雷达系统的复杂性，大部分功能都是在软件中实现的。