Preliminary results of new Jicamarca’s ISR mode

For several years, at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory (IGP-ROJ) we had to choose which operational mode to use depending on the ionospheric parameter (Drifts or Electron Densities) needed to be measured since each experiment requires a different antenna pointing direction.

It was around 2012 when our default ISR mode became a combination of both experiments by using half the antenna for obtaining Drifts, pointing perpendicular to the magnetic field and the other half of the antenna for obtaining Electron Densities pointing off-perpendicular to the magnetic field, but that come to the costs of Signal to Noise ratio.

At the end of 2024 we completed the installation of the Automatic Beam Switching (ABS) for the whole antenna (64 modules) and with this new capability now we can not only change the pointing direction faster than doing it manually, but also we are able to switch the pointing direction of the antenna between experiments.

ABS opens many possibilities like this new proposed ISR mode, where we use the whole antenna to measure Drifts and Electron Densities interleaving between each experiment.

This work will present preliminary results obtained on February 2025 tests by interleaving the Drifts and Electron Densities experiments with durations of 2.5 minutes each experiment and with durations of 5 minutes each experiment and the comparison with the default ISR measurements.