Department of
Electronic Engineering
La Trobe University
Victoria 3086 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 3 9479 2036
Fax: +61 3 9471 0524 Email us
School of Engineering & Mathematical Sciences TIGER - Unwin Radar
In developing the Tasman International Geopspace Enviroment Radar (TIGER) the aim has been to extend the SuperDARN network in the Southern Hemisphere,
but with the important difference of extending coverage to the sub-auroral region. This provides opportunity to observe new phenomena and to improve the coverage of auroral phenomena during
magnetic storms when the aurora expands equatorward of the footprints of the other radars in the SuperDARN network.
The Unwin Radar footprint covers the lower latitude portion of the auroral oval and the ionospheric trough.
The New Zealand component, located on the South Island of New Zealand near the city of Invercargill, began operation in November 2004.
Due to the TIGER - Unwin radar's excellent geophysical location, gives unique opportunities to study Geospace processes such as the Aurora Australis
and related phenomena occurring in the ionosphere (100 to 300km) above the earth.
The TIGER - Unwin radar is based on the exisiting third generation HF radar constructed by the University of Leicester,
including improvements to the transmitters, power supplies and microcontrollers. This radar is a Stereo system, thereby transmitting two different set of frequencies simultaneously at one time.
Where as it's counterpart TIGER - Bruny is a Mono system and transmits one set of frequencies at a one time. Unwin is only one of three stereo radars to be operated in the SuperDARN community
and the only HF Stereo radar to be operating in the southern hemisphere.
The Stereo radar comprises a complete second channel extending back from transmitters to the receivers. Thus the input/output from each transmitter and the four interferometer phase matching units
are split by twenty 2:1 splitters. The second channel is then mirror of the first, having its own phasing matrix, transmit-receive switch, PTS synthesizer and two channel receiver.
A photo of the radar can be seen below.
The basic specifications of the TIGER radar are listed in the table below;
Horizontal: 4° at 10MHz, 3° at 14MHz, 2° at 18MHz
Vertical: 50°
Lobe Levels:
<- 14dB for both back and side lobes
Transmitters:
16 x 600W (one per antenna in Tx/Rx array)
Total Peak Power:
9.6kW
Mean Power:
200W
Radiated Power:
12.5W in main beam direction
Tx Signals:
Pulse pattern duration: ~100 ms
Pules width: 300 us
Bandwidth: 10kHz at -20dB
Duty Cycle: 2.1% Carrier frequency
All SuperDARN radars use common basic operating software which can readily be adapted by each radar group for special operations or new modes
which may later be adopted by the entire radar network.
The radar operates as a fixed-frequency sounder, choosing a suitable frequency in the 8 - 20MHz band. The frequency selected is that providing the
greatest amount of ionospheric scatter across the radar footprint and which, due to ionospheric motions, has a signficantly larger Doppler shift
than sea or ground backscatter. The radars will switch to a different frequency if there is more ionospheric scatter there and it can happen once
every few hours. Frequent changes in operating frequency would make it difficult to separate temporal variatons of ionospheric and magnetospheric
phenomena from progation changes caused in operating frequency.
The transmitting antenna consists of 16 log-periodic, 10 element, horizontally polarised antennas supported by 15m towers. Each antenna is fed by its own
600W power amplifier and a phasing network is used to scan the main beam of the array over 52° of azimuth in 16 steps. The antenna horizontal beamwidth
varies with frequency and pointing direction but is ~3°. A much broader vertical beamwidth (~50°) facilitates the detection of echos with
ranges as small as 180km and as great as 3330km. Both TIGER radars pulse enable the same antenna array to be used for transmission and reception.
An auxiliary receiving array of 4 antennas forms an interferometer to measure the elevation angle of arrival. In the most common modes of operation TIGER
completes a full azimuth scan in 1 or 2 minutes.
TIGER typically operates near 14MHz during day-time and 12MHz at night but this changes with the level of solar activity. It is also capable of swept-frequency
operation meaning that when irregularities are widespread throughout the ionosphere, the radar detects ionospheric and sea scatter over much of its range window
and over abroad band of frequencies.
Content Approved by: Principal Investigator: Prof. J.Devlin
Page maintained by: Webmaster
Last Updated: 18th February, 2011
