Mitigation of the Effects of the Ionosphere on UEWR

We propose to build a model of the Upgraded Early Warning Radar (UEWR), configured for the Thule site, to model the effects of ionospheric scintillation on radar performance. The results of our Phase I investigation show that the physical phenomena driving scintillation link solar energetic events to turbulence in the electron content of the ionosphere. Although there are number of sensors used to observe these phenomena, their complexity precludes a purely theoretical approach to effectively modeling scintillation. Therefore we propose a modeling approach driven by ensemble data analysis. We will evaluate UEWR satellite measurements to identify scintillation effects in the observations. We will compile external sensor measurements from satellites and geomagnetic field sensors and compare them to the UEWR scintillation observations. These data will be used to design and implement a scintillation model configured for the Thule radar that includes correlations with solar activity. A UEWR Thule radar model will be developed based on the dBTools/dBLibs software set that simulates the effects of scintillation on radar detection, tracking, and classification. These models can be used to evaluate radar performance during times of high solar activity