Implementation of an Ionospheric Echoes Receiver using an SDR with GNU Radio to obtain vertical and oblique ionograms

Jicamarca Radio Observatory operates a vertical incidence pulsed ionospheric radar (VIPIR) to obtain equatorial ionograms. This high resolution system complements the current observations at the Observatory. In order to expand its capabilities, a new set of receivers was developed to obtain oblique ionograms by taking advantage of the dispersed echoes generated by VIPIR.
In this poster we introduce the prototype of an Ionospheric Echoes Receiver (IER) by describing its components and the acquisition flowgraph implemented in GNU Radio companion. In addition we present the OOT (Out Of Tree block) implemented to generate the pulsed frequencies to make possible the demodulation. Finally, we show the vertical and oblique ionograms acquired using the Jicamarca VIPIR Ionosonde as a transmitter.