Auto-Processing of OTH Radar Amplitude/Range/Doppler Data.

Abstract : A synoptic data collection effort was begun using the East Coast Radar System (ECRS), as part of Air Force investigations of equatorial ionospheric clutter. Due to the volume of data, an automatic processing scheme has been developed to characterize radar Doppler frequency spectra in terms of a small number of parameters. These parameters allow reconstruction of reasonable facsimiles of the original spectra, and facilitate a comprehensive statistical analysis. A data compression algorithm has also been implemented to provide smoothing and further data reduction. This report describes the compression and processing algorithms, and presents some results from the January, 1992 data campaign.