Radian Corporation

Keith R Peterman

Don T Batson

A radio acoustic sounding system for detecting temperature profiles in the atmosphere, includes an acoustic transmitting antenna for transmitting an acoustic signal; a RF transmitting antenna for transmitting a RF signal used to detect the transmitted acoustic signal; a receiving antenna for receiving a reflection of the RF signal from the acoustic signal; a RF subsystem including a RF sweep generator for producing a frequency modulated, continuous wave (FM-CW) RF signal, a homodyne receiver for receiving the reflected RF signal and for producing an output audio signal in response thereto, and a distribution unit for supplying the FM-CW RF signal from the RF sweep generator to the RF transmitting antenna for transmission thereby, and to the homodyne receiver as a local oscillation signal so that the received reflected RF signal is phase coherent with the transmitted FM-CW RF signal; a programmable filter for filtering out undesirable frequency components of the output audio signal from the homodyne receiver; an analog-to-digital converter for digitally converting said deliberately aliasing the filtered output audio signal under a controlled set of radar and digital sampling parameters; a central processing unit for determining the temperature profile of the atmosphere in response to the filtered and aliased output RF signal; an array processor for spectrally analyzing the digitized signal from the analog-to-digital converter via a Fourier transform so that the central processing unit can analyze the signal; and an acoustic sweep generator for supplying a FM-CW acoustic signal to the acoustic transmitting antenna, in response to the central processing unit.

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Boulder, CO, United States of America

Keith R Peterman