Developing Mesospheric and Lower-Thermospheric Capabilities for the Sondrestrom Radar

在探索中间层和热层之间的耦合的一个主要挑战是获得适当的数据。人们对这个海拔区域知之甚少的部分原因是很难进行充分的测量。例如，使用非相干散射雷达检查高纬度热层和中间层以及研究这些区域之间的耦合需要复杂的雷达技术。这些技术包括巴克编码脉冲、多脉冲、编码长脉冲、高分辨率中间脉冲长度和脉冲对脉冲采样。由于系统硬件的限制，在Sondrestrom雷达设施中只实施了这些技术的原始版本。这种情况正在改变：整个接收器和数据采集系统目前正在升级。升级后的系统将为在非常高纬度的中间层/低层热层区域进行大量期待已久的新观测创造机会。该合同将提供必要的软件开发和数据分析，以允许这些观测，并使用它们来解决中间层/低层热层耦合问题。

A major challenge in exploring the coupling between the mesosphere and thermosphere is to obtain appropriate data. Part of the reason so little is known about this altitude region is the difficulty in making adequate measurements. For example, the ability to use incoherent scatter radar to examine the high-latitude thermosphere and mesosphere and to investigate the coupling between these regions requires sophisticated radar techniques. These techniques include Barker coded pulses, multiple pulses, coded long pulses, high- resolution intermediate pulse lengths, and pulse-to-pulse sampling. Because of system hardware limitations, only primative versions of these techniques have been implemented at the Sondrestrom Radar Facility. This situation is changing: the entire receiver and data-taking systems are currently being upgraded. The upgraded system will create the opportunity for a large number of long-awaited new observations in the mesosphere/lower thermosphere region at very high latitudes. This award will provide for the necessary software development and data analysis to permit these observations and use them to attack the mesosphere/lower thermosphere coupling problem.