THERMOSONDE 2007: In-Situ Measurement of Optical Turbulence

Abstract

This report updates the 1982 Thermosonde technical report, by documenting the current configuration. The wires in the thermosonde are arranged as two legs of a Wheatstone bridge, which generates a voltage proportional to the resistance difference. The telemetry signal now consists of digital signal "counts," rather than analog frequency changes, the multiple segment calibration relationship has been replace by a single straight line, and a new, lower signal calibration input point has been added to the calibration source. Synchronous detection of the telemetry signal has allowed the overall gain to be increased to approximately 600,000. Calibration voltages are read within 1mV for a range of voltages from the minimum, which is the noise floor of about 10 mV (equivalent to about 0.0005K up to a maximum output of 2.0 V. For a modest CT2 value o of 0.0002K2M-213, the uncertainty in Cn2 is down to 1.5 percent. For a stronger CT2 of 0.001 , overall Cn2 uncertainty is below 0.5% at low altitudes and starts to noticeably increase al20 km, reaching a 4% uncertainty at 30 km due to pressure uncertainties.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 07, 2007
Accession Number
ADA551490

Entities

People

  • E. A. Murphy
  • G. Clement
  • G. Y. Jumper
  • K. Robinson
  • P. Tracy
  • R. R. Beland

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Altitude
  • Atmospheric Motion
  • Calibration
  • Data Reduction
  • Detectors
  • Electronics
  • Frequency
  • Ground Stations
  • Heat Transfer
  • Instrumentation
  • Measurement
  • Refractive Index
  • Resistance
  • Sea Level
  • Telemetry

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Systems Analysis and Design