Meteor radar installation

February 2002
ATRAD has recently completed the installation of the Meteor Radar for the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics of The Chinese Academy of Sciences in China.

The customer's site is in a difficult location, with significant RF interference and physical obstruction of antennas. The performance of the Meteor Radar under these conditions will be monitored by ATRAD over the next few months via a telephone dial up modem.

The Meteor Radar is an all-sky meteor radar used for wind and temperature estimation in the middle and upper atmospheres (80 - 100km) by tracking the drift of ionisation trails left by meteoroids as they fall through the atmosphere.

This radar is the first of two radars ordered by the Academy with the second one being an Ionospheric Radar to be delivered mid 2002 which will be used to observe ionospheric irregularities and their drift in the E and F regions of the ionosphere.

This latter radar will operate as a coherent Doppler backscatter radar, with the radar beam to be directed perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field at E or F region heights.