Projects at the Radio Communications Research Unit (RCRU)

RUTHERFORD APPLETON LABORATORY

OPERATION OF THE IONOSONDE SERVICE

DESCRIPTION

More details

Civil and military high frequency (HF) communication services rely on regular forecasts and predictions of HF radio propagation. A worldwide network of ionosondes provides a continous input of ionospheric data to support these forecasts and predictions. World Data Centres archive both raw data from ionosondes in the form of digital ionograms on magnetic tapes, and reduced data using automatic and manual reduction techniques. Hourly measurements are augmented by measurements at 15 minute intervals during World Days. Operators make additional measurements in support of individual research programmes at times and frequencies requested by research workers.

The ionosondes project maintains and operates two digital ionospheric sounders at Chilton in Oxfordshire, and Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. This activity is managed jointly by the STPNFC (STP Facilities Panel) under PPARC. These instruments make routine measurements of the ionosphere which are vital for understanding and predicting global HF radio propagation conditions. The Lowell University DPS-1 digisonde in the Falkland Islands is operated and maintained for RAL by a local contractor. Data are transferred electronically from the site to RAL on an hourly basis and made available via the World Wide Web and for manual scaling. Scaled data is then made available to end users via the Web pages of the World Data Centre at RAL. A second DPS-1 sounder is located on the RAL site at Chilton.

STATUS

The Chilton and Stanley ionondes are performing extremely well with very high operational reliability and both now allow real-time access to the data. Near-real time data is being supplied to two major space weather prediction models, at the NOAA Space Environment Centre (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) in the US and the Australian Ionospheric Prediction Service (IPS). The Lerwick site has now been decommissioned.

CONTACT

Dr C J Davis

LAST UPDATED

January 2001