PROJECT TITLE: Experimental Weak Radio Signals Monitor for Ionospheric Disturbances Analysis — RAMA
Coordinator: BITNET CCSS SRL
Partners: TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY of Cluj-Napoca
Period: 19 November 2012 – 19 November 2014
Project director: Octavian Cristea
Project team: –
Description: Space weather (SWE) refers to the environmental conditions in Earth’s magnetosphere, ionosphere and thermosphere. These conditions are mostly due to the solar activity. Of particular interest is the monitoring and analysis of solar flares induced events. The purpose of this project is to design and experiment a low cost research grade radio system, able to detect solar flares and measure their impact on ionospheric radio wave propagation in different frequency bands.
Project objectives:
- Deployment of an experimental passive radio instrument able to monitor solar flares induced disturbances in low ionospheric layers
- Experimentation of some passive radio monitoring techniques for high ionospheric layers propagation anomalies monitoring
- Acquisition of original data sets regarding solar flares induced ionospheric radio propagation disturbances measured in Romania, especially during the solar maximum activity.
Activities:
1. VLF ionospheric disturbances monitor – design and preliminary tests (TRL 2)
2. VLF ionospheric disturbances monitor – laboratory model (TRL 3_
3. VLF ionospheric disturbances monitor – function oriented model (TRL 5)
4. Multiband ionospheric disturbances monitor – function oriented model (TRL 5)
5. Instrument demonstration and analysis of solar flares induced ionospheric disturbances as measured by RAMA in 2013-2014 (TRL7)
Contributions to the STAR programme objectives:
BITNET is interested in developing high value-added prototypes and services in the field of SSA. RAMA is a prototype instrument which can be integrated in the ESA Space Weather network of ground-based sensors. This might be of particular interest since actually there is no such sensor in SE Europe (at least not in an ESA country).
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