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Narrowband and Wideband Channel Sounding of an Antarctica to Spain Ionospheric Radio Link
* 1 , * 1 , 1 , 1 , 1 , 2
1  GR-SETAD, La Salle - URL
2  Observatori de l’Ebre, CSIC - Universitat Ramon Llull

Published: 22 June 2015 by MDPI in 1st International Electronic Conference on Remote Sensing session Applications
Abstract:

La Salle and the Ebro Observatory have been involved in a joint project about remote sensing in Antarctica during the last 11 years (approximately a solar cycle). The Ebro Observatory has been monitoring the geomagnetic and the ionospheric activity in the Juan Carlos I Antarctic Spanish Station (ASJI), for more than fifteen years. La Salle has two main goals in the project; on one hand, the data transmission and reception to obtain a historical series of channel sounding of a 12760 km ionospheric HF radio link, and on the other hand, the establishment of a stable data communication system between the ASJI and Cambrils (Spain) to transmit the data from the remote sensors located in the island. Currently, only a part of the processed geomagnetic data can be sent to Ebro Observatory when the ASJI is unattended through satellite communications. However, during the austral summer, when the ASJI is operative, the RAW data from the geomagnetic network sensors can be fully transmitted through ionospheric communications. In 2008, we developed the first channel characterization approach, using multipath delay spread, Doppler spread, SNR and availability of the narrowband and wideband soundings conducted at certain frequencies at some hours of the day. In 2012, the narrowband sounding was improved using several windowing of the received data. In this paper, both narrowband and wideband soundings have been taken into account to determine channel availability performed using a frequency range from 2 to 30 MHz with 0.5 MHz step during the 24 hours of the day, which is a wider sweep of channel measurements than previously. This paper presents the results for the austral summer in 2014. These measurements were performed using a monopole antenna at the transmitter and an inverted V on the receiver side.

Keywords: geomagnetism; remote sensors; HF; ionosphere; channel sounding; Antarctica
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