MIDAS-W: a workstation-based incoherent scatter radar data acquisition system     

J. M. Holt  P. J. Erickson  A. M. Gorczyca  T. Grydeland 《Annales Geophysicae》2000,18(9):1231-1241

The Millstone Hill Incoherent Scatter Data Acquisition System (MIDAS) is based on an abstract model of an incoherent scatter radar. This model is implemented in a hierarchical software system, which serves to isolate hardware and low-level software implementation details from higher levels of the system. Inherent in this is the idea that implementation details can easily be changed in response to technological advances. MIDAS is an evolutionary system, and the MIDAS hardware has, in fact, evolved while the basic software model has remained unchanged. From the earliest days of MIDAS, it was realized that some functions implemented in specialized hardware might eventually be implemented by software in a general-purpose computer. MIDAS-W is the realization of this concept. The core component of MIDAS-W is a Sun Microsystems UltraSparc 10 workstation equipped with an Ultrarad 1280 PCI bus analog to digital (A/D) converter board. In the current implementation, a 2.25 MHz intermediate frequency (IF) is bandpass sampled at 1 s intervals and these samples are multicast over a high-speed Ethernet which serves as a raw data bus. A second workstation receives the samples, converts them to filtered, decimated, complex baseband samples and computes the lag-profile matrix of the decimated samples. Overall performance is approximately ten times better than the previous MIDAS system, which utilizes a custom digital filtering module and array processor based correlator. A major advantage of MIDAS-W is its flexibility. A portable, single-workstation data acquisition system can be implemented by moving the software receiver and correlator programs to the workstation with the A/D converter. When the data samples are multicast, additional data processing systems, for example for raw data recording, can be implemented simply by adding another workstation with suitable software to the high-speed network. Testing of new data processing software is also greatly simplified, because a workstation with the new software can be added to the network without impacting the production system. MIDAS-W has been operated in parallel with the existing MIDAS-1 system to verify that incoherent scatter measurements by the two systems agree. MIDAS-W has also been used in a high-bandwidth mode to collect data on the November, 1999, Leonid meteor shower.  相似文献   

The ALOMAR Rayleigh/Mie/Raman lidar: objectives, configuration, and performance     

U. von Zahn  G. von Cossart  J. Fiedler  K. H. Fricke  G. Nelke  G. Baumgarten  D. Rees  A. Hauchecorne  K. Adolfsen 《Annales Geophysicae》2000,18(7):815-833

We report on the development and current capabilities of the ALOMAR Rayleigh/Mie/Raman lidar. This instrument is one of the core instruments of the international ALOMAR facility, located near Andenes in Norway at 69°N and 16°E. The major task of the instrument is to perform advanced studies of the Arctic middle atmosphere over altitudes between about 15 to 90 km on a climatological basis. These studies address questions about the thermal structure of the Arctic middle atmosphere, the dynamical processes acting therein, and of aerosols in the form of stratospheric background aerosol, polar stratospheric clouds, noctilucent clouds, and injected aerosols of volcanic or anthropogenic origin. Furthermore, the lidar is meant to work together with other remote sensing instruments, both ground- and satellite-based, and with balloon- and rocket-borne instruments performing in situ observations. The instrument is basically a twin lidar, using two independent power lasers and two tiltable receiving telescopes. The power lasers are Nd:YAG lasers emitting at wavelengths 1064, 532, and 355 nm and producing 30 pulses per second each. The power lasers are highly stabilized in both their wavelengths and the directions of their laser beams. The laser beams are emitted into the atmosphere fully coaxial with the line-of-sight of the receiving telescopes. The latter use primary mirrors of 1.8 m diameter and are tiltable within 30° off zenith. Their fields-of-view have 180 rad angular diameter. Spectral separation, filtering, and detection of the received photons are made on an optical bench which carries, among a multitude of other optical components, three double Fabry-Perot interferometers (two for 532 and one for 355 nm) and one single Fabry-Perot interferometer (for 1064 nm). A number of separate detector channels also allow registration of photons which are produced by rotational-vibrational and rotational Raman scatter on N₂ and N₂+O₂ molecules, respectively. Currently, up to 36 detector channels simultaneously record the photons collected by the telescopes. The internal and external instrument operations are automated so that this very complex instrument can be operated by a single engineer. Currently the lidar is heavily used for measurements of temperature profiles, of cloud particle properties such as their altitude, particle densities and size distributions, and of stratospheric winds. Due to its very effective spectral and spatial filtering, the lidar has unique capabilities to work in full sunlight. Under these conditions it can measure temperatures up to 65 km altitude and determine particle size distributions of overhead noctilucent clouds. Due to its very high mechanical and optical stability, it can also employed efficiently under marginal weather conditions when data on the middle atmosphere can be collected only through small breaks in the tropospheric cloud layers.  相似文献   

Description of the long-term ozone data series obtained from different instrumental techniques at a single location: the Observatoire de Haute-Provence (43.9°N, 5.7°E)     

M. Guirlet  P. Keckhut  S. Godin  G. Megie 《Annales Geophysicae》2000,18(10):1325-1339

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IMPACT: an implicit time integration scheme for chemical species and families     

G. D. Carver  P. A. Stott 《Annales Geophysicae》2000,18(3):337-346

The implicit time integration scheme of Stott and Harwood (1993) was proposed as an efficient scheme for use in three-dimensional chemical models of the atmosphere. The scheme was designed for chemistry schemes using chemical families, in which species with short lifetimes are grouped into longer-lived families. Further study with more complex chemistry, more species and reactions showed the scheme to be non-convergent and unstable under certain conditions; particularly for the perturbed chemical scenarios of polar stratospheric winters. In this work the scheme has been improved by revising the treatment of families and the convergence properties of the scheme. The new scheme has been named IMPACT (IMPlicit Algorithm for Chemical Time-stepping). It remains easy to implement and produces simulations that compare well with integrations using more accurate higher order schemes.  相似文献   

Sensor Calibration in Support for NOAA’s Satellite Mission     

Xiangqian WU  Changyong CAO 《大气科学进展》2006,23(1):80-90

Sensor calibration, including its definition, purpose, traceability options, methodology, complexity, and importance, is examined in this paper in the context of supporting NOAA's satellite mission. Common understanding of sensor calibration is essential for the effective communication among sensor vendors, calibration scientists, satellite operators, program managers, and remote sensing data users, who must cooperate to ensure that a nation's strategic investment in a sophisticated operational environmental satellite system serves the nation's interest and enhances the human lives around the world. Examples of calibration activities at NOAA/NESDIS/ORA are selected to further illustrate these concepts and to demonstrate the lessons learned from the past experience.  相似文献   

Inversion, error analysis, and validation of GPS/MET occultation data     

A. K. Steiner  G. Kirchengast  H. P. Ladreiter 《Annales Geophysicae》1998,17(1):122-138

The global positioning system meteorology (GPS/MET) experiment was the first practical demonstration of global navigation satellite system (GNSS)-based active limb sounding employing the radio occultation technique. This method measures, as principal observable and with millimetric accuracy, the excess phase path (relative to propagation in vacuum) of GNSS-transmitted radio waves caused by refraction during passage through the Earth’s neutral atmosphere and ionosphere in limb geometry. It shows great potential utility for weather and climate system studies in providing an unique combination of global coverage, high vertical resolution and accuracy, long-term stability, and all-weather capability. We first describe our GPS/MET data processing scheme from excess phases via bending angles to the neutral atmospheric parameters refractivity, density, pressure and temperature. Special emphasis is given to ionospheric correction methodology and the inversion of bending angles to refractivities, where we introduce a matrix inversion technique (instead of the usual integral inversion). The matrix technique is shown to lead to identical results as integral inversion but is more directly extendable to inversion by optimal estimation. The quality of GPS/MET-derived profiles is analyzed with an error estimation analysis employing a Monte Carlo technique. We consider statistical errors together with systematic errors due to upper-boundary initialization of the retrieval by a priori bending angles. Perfect initialization and properly smoothed statistical errors allow for better than 1 K temperature retrieval accuracy up to the stratopause. No initialization and statistical errors yield better than 1 K accuracy up to 30 km but less than 3 K accuracy above 40 km. Given imperfect initialization, biases ≫ 2 K propagate down to below 30 km height in unfavorable realistic cases. Furthermore, results of a statistical validation of GPS/MET profiles through comparison with atmospheric analyses of the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) are presented. The comparisons indicate the high utility of the occultation data in that very good agreement of upper troposphere/lower stratosphere temperature (better than 1.5 K rms, ≪ 0.5 K bias) is found for a region (Europe+USA) where the ECMWF analyses are known to be good, but poorer agreement for a region (Southern Pacific) where the analyses are known to be degraded.  相似文献   

Pixel-based correction for Charge Transfer Inefficiency in the Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys     

Richard Massey  Chris Stoughton  Alexie Leauthaud  Jason Rhodes  Anton Koekemoer  Richard Ellis  Edgar Shaghoulian 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2010,401(1):371-384

Charge Transfer Inefficiency (CTI) due to radiation damage above the Earth's atmosphere creates spurious trailing in Hubble Space Telescope ( HST ) images. Radiation damage also creates unrelated warm pixels – but these happen to be perfect for measuring CTI. We model CTI in the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)/Wide Field Channel and construct a physically motivated correction scheme. This operates on raw data, rather than secondary science products, by returning individual electrons to pixels from which they were unintentionally dragged during readout. We apply our correction to images from the HST Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS), successfully reducing the CTI trails by a factor of ∼30 everywhere in the CCD and at all flux levels. We quantify changes in galaxy photometry, astrometry and shape. The remarkable 97 per cent level of correction is more than sufficient to enable a (forthcoming) reanalysis of downstream science products and the collection of larger surveys.  相似文献   

Scientific Objectives of China-Russia Joint Mars Exploration Program YH-1     

Ji Wu  Guang-Wu Zhu  Hua Zhao  Chi Wang  Lei Li  Yue-Qiang Sun  Wei Guo  Cheng-Li Huang 《Chinese Astronomy and Astrophysics》2010

Compared with other planets, Mars is a planet most similar with the earth and most possible to find the extraterrestrial life on it, and therefore especially concerned about by human beings. In recent years, some countries have launched Mars probes and announced their manned Mars exploration programs. China has become the fifth country in the world to launch independently artificial satellites, and the third country able to carry out an independent manned space program. However, China is just at the beginning of deep space explorations. In 2007, China and Russia signed an agreement on a joint Mars exploration program by sending a Chinese micro-satellite Yinghuo-1 (YH-1) to the Mars orbit. Once YH-1 enters its orbit, it will carry out its own exploration, as well as the joint exploration with the Russian Phobos-Grunt probe. This paper summarizes the scientific background and objectives of YH-1 and describes briefly its payloads for realizing these scientific objectives. In addition, the main exploration tasks of YH-1 and a preliminary prospect on its exploration results are also given.  相似文献   

The Key Techniques and Design Features of YH-1 Mars Probe     

Chang-Ya Chen  Jian-Wen Hou  Guang-Wu Zhu 《Chinese Astronomy and Astrophysics》2010

In this paper, the function and composition as well as the key techniques (ultra-long distance communication, attitude determination and control, thermal control, ultra-low temperature acclimatization, etc.) of China's first Mars probe are analyzed. In combination with practical engineering conditions, the solutions of these key techniques are given. The design features of the probe are summarized, as a reference for developing the probes of the subsequent related missions in China.  相似文献   

人工影响天气作业装备研发和应用进展   总被引：8，自引：0，他引：8  

邵洋  ;刘伟  ;孟旭  ;王广河 《干旱气象》2014,(4):649-658

人工影响天气科学活动持续了将近70 a,其作业装备和技术方法均得到了很大的发展,已经形成空中和地面一体化作业体系。以美国、加拿大、澳大利亚、以色列、南非、泰国等为代表的国家主要使用飞机和地面发生器开展人工影响天气作业。以俄罗斯、中国、保加利亚等为代表的国家在使用飞机和地面发生器的同时,也使用火箭(或高炮)开展人工影响天气作业。随着高性能飞机的投入使用,播撒技术和催化剂配方的不断研发改进,人工影响天气作业装备整体水平有了明显的发展和提高。文章分别介绍了国内外人工影响天气飞机及机载作业装备、火箭和高炮、地面发生器、常用催化剂的研发和应用情况及未来发展趋势。  相似文献