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An efficient near‐optimal approach to incoherent scatter radar parameter estimation
Author(s) -
Nikoukar Romina,
Kamalabadi Farzad,
Kudeki Erhan,
Sulzer Michael
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
radio science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1944-799X
pISSN - 0048-6604
DOI - 10.1029/2007rs003724
Subject(s) - radar , autocorrelation , incoherent scatter , ionosphere , range (aeronautics) , computation , estimation theory , least squares function approximation , algorithm , mathematics , computer science , statistics , physics , geophysics , telecommunications , materials science , estimator , composite material
We present a computationally efficient, near‐optimal approach to the estimation of ionospheric parameters from incoherent scatter radar measurements. The method consists of removing the range smearing of ionospheric autocorrelation function via a set of 1‐D deconvolutions and performing nonlinear least squares fitting on the deconvolved autocorrelation functions. To stabilize the solution in the presence of noise, we incorporate regularization techniques. The computational cost is reduced significantly by estimating the ionospheric parameters at individual altitudes, in comparison to full‐profile‐type analysis, which attempts to estimate ionospheric parameters at all altitudes simultaneously. The performance of the new technique is evaluated in a numerical example and is shown to give estimates of almost equal quality as the full‐profile technique but at a 95% reduction in computation.