Scientific objectives
Auroral Radio Spectrograph (ARS) is designed to detect auroral radio emissions in MF/HF range in the polar cap and cusp regions. These emissions, referred to as auroral roar and MF burst, are considered to be generated in the auroral ionosphere by precipitating electrons. ARS consists of 3 loop antennas and two types of observation systems (ARS-S and ARS-WF). ARS-S monitors spectra of radio waves in a frequency range of 300 kHz - 6 MHz. ARS-WF is designed to obtain waveform data in a frequency range below 4 MHz by an A/D converter with a sampling speed of 10MSPS. By using the wave form data, the arrival direction angle of a received radio wave can be estimated. In addition, collaboration with other ground-based observations and particle measurement by polar satellites provides an invaluable opportunity to reach our goal of understanding the generation mechanism of the auroral radio emissions.

Owner: Tohoku University
Contacts PI: Takayuki Ono
Address:
Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, 6-3 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan
E-mail: ono@stpp1.geophys.tohoku.ac.jp

Instrument specifications
ARS-S
Frequency response: 300 kHz - 6 MHz (-3dB)
Time resolution: 1 sec
Frequency resolution band width: 10 kHz
ARS-WF
Frequency response: 300 kHz - 4 MHz (-3dB)
ADC sampling rate: 10M sample/sec