SWAVES

SWAVES The Radio and Plasma Wave Investigation on the STEREO mission ( for a detailed description see Bougeret et al., 2008)

http://swaves.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Contact persons : M. Maksimovic, R. MacDowall

The SWAVES experiment includes the following instruments and components : (1) Radio receivers (HFR and LFRhi) that measure radio wave intensity, source direction, and angular size in the frequency range of 16 MHz to 40 kHz, corresponding to source distances of about 1 RS to 1 AU. (2) Low Frequency Receivers (LFRlo) that make sensitive measurements of radio and plasma waves near the electron plasma frequency at 1 AU (10-40 kHz). (3) A Fixed Frequency Receiver (FFR) that measures radio emissions at 50 MHz, at high time resolution, to complement ground-based radioheliograph measurements. (4) Time Domain Samplers (TDS) that simultaneously make wideband waveform measurements on 3 electric at one of several commandable sample rates and bandwidths.
Antenna systems include three mutually orthogonal 6-meter monopoles on each STEREO spacecraft. A Data Processing Unit (DPU) on each spacecraft controls and coordinates the various instrument components and performs digital signal processing.

The web page includes the data from one band of the LFR (40 kHz to 160 kHz) and the whole range of HFR (125 kHz to 16 MHz).

The following table summarizes the main characteristics of the concerned receivers.

Band C from LFR HFR
Frequency coverage 40 kHz - 160kHz 125kHz - 16.025 MHz
Bandwidth 2-octave 25kHz
Frequency resolution ΔF/Fo = 8.66% >=< 50kHz
Sensitivity 6nV/rootHz 6nV/rootHz
Dynamic range 120dB 80dB

J.L. Bougeret, K. Goetz, M.L. Kaiser et al. The radio and plasma wave investigation on the STEREO mission,Space Science Reviews, Vol 136, issue 1-4, 2008