WIOBSS: The Chinese low-power digital ionosonde for ionospheric backscattering detection

The ionospheric laboratory of Wuhan University has developed an ionosonde over about seven years. The prototype is designed as a portable, low-power digital MF (medium frequency) and HF (high frequency) radio system with high range and Doppler resolution. The first system is used for ionospheric oblique backscattering detection and called WIOBSS (Wuhan Ionospheric Oblique Backscattering Sounding System). WIOBSS is a portable monostatic ionosonde for both ionospheric research and HF channel management, adopting alternate transmitting and receiving patterns to transmit long coded pulse trains for high pulse compression gain. The almost perfect sequences are applied to modulate the pulse train for sounding without range sidelobes and the echo phase is used to estimate the Doppler velocity and velocity fluctuation. This paper introduces the new techniques adopted by WIOBSS and presents some observations.