Dome C Info : Virginia Tech SuperDARN

Dome C (75.090 S, 123.350 E)

The SuperDARN radar at Dome C began operations in January 2013. It forms a common-volume pair with the SuperDARN radar located at South Pole Station (U.S.). The electronics for the radar are based on the University of Saskatchewan design. The start date for data availability is 20130123.

The PI for the Dome C East radar is Dr. Maria Frederica Marcucci of the INAF-Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali (Rome). She took over from the original PI, Dr. Ermanno Amata (2013-2016) at the SuperDARN 2016 Workshop in Fairbanks, Alaska.

The radar is located at 1.4 km from the Franco-Italian base Concordia, at Dome C, i.e., very close to the Antarctic geomagnetic pole, at about 3200 m above sea level. This makes it the highest geomagnetic latitude radar and the highest altitude radar.

The construction of the SuperDARN Dome C East (DCE) radar at Concordia Research Station was constructed with the support of Italian and French funding agencies and it is now maintained with the support of the Italian National Program for Antarctic Research (PNRA). The contributing agencies are:

Italy

Programma Nazionale di Ricerche in Antartide (PNRA)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)
Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)

France

Institut Polaire Francais (IPEV)
Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers (INSU)

24-OCT-2018: Note from Fredercca: Our team will arrive in Dome C beginning of November, in order to fix up DCE and complete the DCN installation. Also Jan Wiid will join the team in January. What I really hope, apart from the successful completion and first light tof DCN, is that we can assess that the last five month DCE data, even if affected, are still usable.
Rome, 21 January 2016. David Biondi (INAF-IAPS) and Enrico Simeoli (CNR-Reti e Sistemi Informativi) (pictured below) are just back to Italy from Dome C, Antarctica, after a 10 days trip.

They first flew from Dome C to the Italian Mario Zucchelli station on a Twin Otter; then they were transferred from Mario Zucchelli to Christchurch, New Zealand, by the Italica cargo ship. From Christchurch they flew back to Rome. David and Enrico had arrived at Dome C at the beginning of November 2015. At Dome C they first successfully fulfilled their mission of taking the Dome C East radar back to life.

A power line failure at the end of July 2015, had left the DCE radar electronics below -60 degrees Celsius for several days, until Dome C winterers succeeded in repairing the power line. David and Enrico found out that only PC Main had been damaged and replaced it. DCE started to operate again on 24 November 2015. After that, “normal” (if anything can be called "normal" at Dome C.!) maintenance of antennae and other radar systems was performed.

Thanks a lot to David, Enrico, Corrado Leone (CNR-DTA), who performed the DCE maintenance in the past years, and to all the people who helped them at Dome C! David and Enrico

Dome C East (code: DCE, ID: 96)
Geog. Position: (-75.090°, +123.350°, 3233.0m)
Configuration valid from	Configuration valid until	Scanning Boresite [°]	Beam Separation [°]	Velocity Sign	Attenuation Step* [dB]	Time Difference [μs]	Phase Sign	Interferometer Array Position [m]			Receiver Rise Time* [μs]	Stages of Attenuation*	No. of Gates	No. of Beams
	Current	115.0	-3.24	+1	10	-0.151	+0	+0.0	-90.0	+0.0	100.0	7	75	16
* Only valid for analog receivers, 0 for digital receivers								Last Updated: Mon Jul 8 07:25:01 2019

Position in Line	Parameter Name	Description
1	Station ID	The unique numeric ID of the radar. Assigned by Rob Barnes.
2	Year	This and the next parameter describe the date up until which the radar configuration described in that line was valid.
3	Seconds in Year	This and the previous parameter describe the date up until which the radar configuration described in that line was valid.
4	Geog. Latitude	The geographic latitude of the radar location, given in decimal degrees to 3 decimal places. Southern hemisphere values are negative.
5	Geog. Longitude	The geographic longitude of the radar location, in degree given in decimal degrees to 3 decimal places. West longitude values are negative.
6	Altitude	The altitude above sealevel of the radar location, in meter.
7	Scanning Boresite	The direction of the center of the field-of-view of the radar, in degree, relative to geographic North, positive clockwise. Traditionally, this direction was the same as the direction of the main antenna array normal.
8	Beam Separation	The angular separation of two adjacent beams, in degree. Normally 3.24 degrees.
9	Velocity Sign	The sign of the velocity direction, either +1 or -1, usually +1.(At the radar level, backscattered signals with frequencies above the transmitted frequency are assigned positive Doppler velocities while backscattered signals with frequencies below the transmitted frequency are assigned negative Doppler velocity. This convention can be reversed by changes in receiver design or in the data samping rate. This parameter is set to +1 or -1 to maintain the convention.)
10	Attenuation Step*	The step size of the receiver attenuation in dB.
11	Time Difference	The relative time delay of signal paths from the interferometer array to the receiver and the main array to the receiver, in microseconds. tdiff = signal_travel_time_from_interferometer_to_receiver - signal_travel_time_from_main_to_receiver If tdiff is positive, the signal travel time from the interferometer array to the receiver is longer than the travel time from the main array to the receiver.
12	Phase Sign	The sign of the phase shift between interferometer and main array, either +1 or -1, usually +1. (Cabling errors can lead to a 180 degree shift of the interferometry phase measurement. +1 indicates that the sign is correct, -1 indicates that it must be flipped.)
13	Interferometer Array Position X	The offset distance between the mid points of the interferometer and main array, in the direction along the main array, positive towards higher antenna numbers, in meter.
14	Interferometer Array Position Y	The offset distance between the mid points of the interferometer and main array, in the direction perpendicular to the main array, positive values indicate that the interferometer array is in front of the main array, in meter.
15	Interferometer Array Position Z	The offset distance between the mid points of the interferometer and main array, in the vertical direction, positive up, in meter.
16	Receiver Rise Time*	The rise time of the analog receiver, in microseconds. (Time delays of less than ~10 microseconds can be ignored. If narrow-band filters are used in analog receivers or front-ends, the time delays should be specified.)
17	Stages of Attenuation*	The maximum number of steps of analog attenuation in the receiver. (This is used for gain control of an analog receiver or front-end.)
18	No. of Gates	The maximum number of range gates from which the radar can receive data. Usually 75. (This is used for allocation of array storage.)
19	No. of Beams	The maximum number of beams the radar can form. Usually 16. Together with the scanning boresite, this parameter defined the direction of each beam relative to geographic North. (It is important to specify the true maximum. This will assure that a given beam number always points in the same direction. A subset of these beams, e.g. 8-23, can be used for standard 16 beam operation.)
* Only valid for analog receivers, 0 for digital receivers		Last Updated: Sun Mar 26 07:25:02 2023

Dome C (75.090 S, 123.350 E)

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