Motivated by the interest to study PMSE in Antarctica and Equatorial Electrojet along the southern Peruvian coasts, a VHF radar was developed and installed in 1998 by the Jicamarca Radar Observatory group on board the Peruvian research vessel BIC Humboldt (see description on a companion paper by Woodman, et. al). During the test runs of this radar, very strong echoes from the Andes were observed. In order to obtain profiles of the mountains and other facing targets, as glaciers in Antarctica, sorne efforts have been carried out to observe and process these echoes using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) techniques SAR is a well known airborne (or spaceborne) radar mapping technique for generating high resolution maps of surface target areas and terrain. SAR applications include topographic mapping, surface deformation studies related to seismic activity and extraction of oíl and ground wate...

This paper describes a signal processing and control system, designed and built for the Peruvian MST radar installed in the "Machu-Picchu" Scientific Station, Antarctica (62 º05'5 S, 58º28' W). System architecture, based in a single PC and two DSP boards, and design considerations are discussed. Toe system allows up to 4 receiver signals to be processed in parallel, with 60 range gates and 150 m maximum height resolution. System evaluation and sorne experimental results are reported.

This paper describes a signal processing and control system, designed and built in collaboration between Jicamarca Radar Observatory and University of Piura, Peru, for the peruvian MST radar installed in the "Machu-Picchu" Scientific Station, Antarctica (62 05'5 S, 58 28' W). An identical system has been built for the Jicamarca Unattended Long-term Investigations of the Atmosphere (JULIA) project.

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Este artículo describe el radar coherente VHF instalado a bordo del Buque de Investigación Científica B.I.C. Humboldt. El sistema fue diseñado y construido en el Radio Observatorio de Jicamarca. El instrumento cuenta con un arreglo de antenas tipo COCO de 24x2 l m, especialmente diseñado para su instalación en un buque. Se presenta una descripción del instrumento, así como los primeros resultados de las observaciones de Ecos Mesosféricos Polares de Verano (PMSE) en la Antártida y del Electrochorro Ecuatorial a lo largo de la costa Sur del Perú.

The mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere (MST) radar at Jicamarca, Peru (12S, 77W), made extended (15 day or longer) observations of the horizontal and vertical winds that were used to infer the diurnal and semidiurnal tides. The measurements were made during several months from mid-1997 through mid-1998 and using a higher-power transmitter and finer range resolution during 10 days of August 1998. The three-component winds are used to estimate amplitudes, phases, and momentum fluxes associated with the tides. Thermal forcing of the diurnal tide is also examined with diurnal water vapor heating rates calculated using data from the NASA Water Vapor Project (NVAP). For the region near Jicamarca the calculations from NVAP showed the temporal variability of the diurnal heating to be dominated by an annual cycle with maximum around the summer solstice. When projected into tidal modes, about 25%...

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