Ionospheric probing with an HF radar

The Jindalee over-the-horizon (OTH) radar is designed primarily for extended air defence surveillance of Australia´s northern coastline. It achieves its long-range capability by employing ionospheric reflection. This use of the ionosphere allows the radar to have a powerful secondary role in remote sensing because information about the ionosphere can be made available as a byproduct of radar operations. Information about the ionosphere can be estimated for each radar resolution cell in range and azimuth. This information is updated each time the radar scans. The paper describes some of the remote-sensing capabilities of the Jindalee radar and presents some results concerning TIDs (travelling ionospheric disturbances), effects of the dawn terminator passage, geographic variations of ionisation density and meteor backscatter