Design of the New MST Radar in Chinese Meridian Project

With the support of the second phase of the Chinese Meridian Project, a new mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere observation radar (MST radar), called Qinzhou MST radar, located in Qinzhou City, Guangxi Province, China (22°7'55''N,108°16'20''E) is under construction. The...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of selected topics in applied earth observations and remote sensing 2021, Vol.14, p.2689-2698
Main Authors: Chen, Gang, He, Zhiqiu, Zhang, Shaodong, Fuller, Brian, Gong, Wanlin, Yang, Guotao, Zhang, Weifan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Antenna array
Antenna arrays
atmosphere observation
Bandwidths
Channels
Construction
Doppler radar
Doppler sonar
Frequency dependence
Interferometry
Lower mantle
Mesosphere
mesosphere–stratosphere–troposphere observation radar (MST radar)
Phased arrays
Pulse Doppler radar
Radar
Radar antennas
Radar arrays
Radar remote sensing
Receiving
Stratosphere
System analysis and design
Transmission
Transmitters
Troposphere
Urban areas
Yagi antennas
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Summary:With the support of the second phase of the Chinese Meridian Project, a new mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere observation radar (MST radar), called Qinzhou MST radar, located in Qinzhou City, Guangxi Province, China (22°7'55''N,108°16'20''E) is under construction. The Qinzhou MST radar is a large VHF monostatic pulse Doppler radar with an active phased array antenna system, mainly using Doppler beam swinging technique for observation. The capability of multibeam observation, space antenna observation, and frequency- and spatial-domain interferometry are also employed. The main scientific objective of this radar is to explore the atmosphere dynamical processes at low latitudes of China. The observation of ionospheric field-aligned irregularities (FAIs) is also an important function of the radar. The radar applies a circular array composed of 1261 3-element crossed Yagi antennas with a diameter of 153 m and an aperture of near 2×10 4 m 2 . Thereinto, 997 elements connect both transmitting and receiving channels and 264 elements distributed near the edge connect only receiving channels. The peak power of the transmitter in each transmitting/receiving (T/R) module is 2 kW. The central frequency and bandwidth of the output signal are 50 and 4 MHz, respectively. The peak power of the whole system will be close to 2 MW. This article presents the initial design of the Qinzhou MST radar, and the construction will be completed at the end of 2022.
ISSN:1939-1404
2151-1535
DOI:10.1109/JSTARS.2021.3057610