Abstract
For decades, high-frequency (HF) radar has played an important role in sensing the Earth’s environment. Advances in radar technology are providing opportunities to significantly improve the performance of HF radar, and to introduce more applications. This paper presents a low-power, small-size, and multifunctional HF radar developed by the Ionospheric Laboratory of Wuhan University, referred to as the Wuhan Ionospheric Oblique Backscattering Sounding System (WIOBSS). Progress in the development of this radar is described in detail, including the basic principles of operation, the system configuration, the sounding waveforms, and the signal and data processing methods. Furthermore, its various remote sensing applications are briefly reviewed to show the good performance of this radar. Finally, some suggested solutions are given for further improvement of its performance.
Highlights
Since high-frequency (HF) radio waves with frequencies between 3 and 30 MHz can be reflected by the ionosphere and propagated by the sea surface, they are one of the best candidates for long-range communication [1], but are an important frequency band for radar to sense the Earth’s environment [2]
Based on techniques of the integrated circuit chip, programmable digital signal processing, and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), Liu et al [54] developed the initial version of Wuhan Ionospheric Oblique Backscattering Sounding System (WIOBSS) in 2003 to validate the possibility of ionospheric backscatter sounding with an inter-pulse pseudorandom binary phase coded waveform
Some good sounding results have been achieved by WIOBSS after its new system design, the performance of this radar is still limited by many factors, such as the lack of a large antenna array and the influence of multipath propagation
Summary
Since high-frequency (HF) radio waves with frequencies between 3 and 30 MHz can be reflected by the ionosphere and propagated by the sea surface, they are one of the best candidates for long-range communication [1], but are an important frequency band for radar to sense the Earth’s environment [2]. Considering the practical radar resolution that depends on the width of the antenna beam and the range to the target, this OTHR is most useful for providing early warnings of low-flying aircraft [11], ships [12], sea-skimming missiles [13], and icebergs [14] It has already been successfully applied to the remote sensing of surface currents [15], ocean-surface wind fields [16], and the significant waveheight [17]. With proper time and frequency synchronization schemes, WIOBSS can be configured as a multistatic radar to detect a target in a much larger surveillance area and to extract more information from the target, but can be configured as an HF passive radar to receive the signals emitted by existing HF broadcasts and to perform single site location (SSL) With this new system design, in addition to oblique backscatter sounding, other functionalities have been achieved with WIOBSS, including the vertical- and oblique-incidence soundings, the passive sounding in the HF band, aircraft detection, and ocean sensing. According to the current problems existing in this radar, several recommendations are provided to further improve its performance
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