TY - JOUR
T1 - An overview of VHF lightning observations by digital interferometry from ISS/JEM-GLIMS
AU - Morimoto, Takeshi
AU - Kikuchi, Hiroshi
AU - Sato, Mitsuteru
AU - Ushio, Tomoo
AU - Yamazaki, Atsushi
AU - Suzuki, Makoto
AU - Ishida, Ryohei
AU - Sakamoto, Yuji
AU - Yoshida, Kazuya
AU - Hobara, Yasuhide
AU - Sano, Takuki
AU - Abe, Takumi
AU - Kawasaki, Zen Ichiro
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors cordially acknowledge the engineers of companies that contributed toward development, especially Advanced Engineering Services Co., Ltd., Dainichi Denshi Co., Ltd., Japan Communication Equipment Co., Ltd., AD Co., Ltd., and Meisei Electric Co., Ltd. The authors also thank JAXA’s full support for the JEM-GLIMS continuous operation and data acquisition. We also acknowledge the editor and reviewers considerably improved the quality of the paper. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 24340117 and 16H04055.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 The Author(s).
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - The Global Lightning and sprIte MeasurementS (GLIMS) mission has been conducted at the Exposed Facility of Japanese Experiment Module (JEM-EF) of the International Space Station for more than 30 months. This paper focuses on an electromagnetic (EM) payload of JEM-GLIMS mission, the very high frequency (VHF) broadband digital InTerFerometer (VITF). The JEM-GLIMS mission is designed to conduct comprehensive observations with both EM and optical payloads for lightning activities and related transient luminous events. Its nominal operation continued from November 2012 to December 2014. The extended operation followed for eight months. Through the operation period, the VITF collected more than two million VHF EM waveforms in almost 18,700 datasets. The number of VITF observations synchronized with optical signal is 8049. Active VHF radiations are detected in about 70 % of optical observations without obvious regional or seasonal dependency. Estimations of the EM direction-of-arrival (DOA) are attempted using the broadband digital interferometry. Some results agree with the optical observations, even though DOA estimation is problematic because of a very short antenna baseline and multiple pulses over a short time period, namely burst-type EM waveforms. The world's first lightning observations by means of space-borne VHF interferometry are achieved in this mission. This paper summarizes VITF instruments, the recorded VHF EM signals, and the results of DOA estimations by means of digital interferometry as a preliminary report after termination of the mission.
AB - The Global Lightning and sprIte MeasurementS (GLIMS) mission has been conducted at the Exposed Facility of Japanese Experiment Module (JEM-EF) of the International Space Station for more than 30 months. This paper focuses on an electromagnetic (EM) payload of JEM-GLIMS mission, the very high frequency (VHF) broadband digital InTerFerometer (VITF). The JEM-GLIMS mission is designed to conduct comprehensive observations with both EM and optical payloads for lightning activities and related transient luminous events. Its nominal operation continued from November 2012 to December 2014. The extended operation followed for eight months. Through the operation period, the VITF collected more than two million VHF EM waveforms in almost 18,700 datasets. The number of VITF observations synchronized with optical signal is 8049. Active VHF radiations are detected in about 70 % of optical observations without obvious regional or seasonal dependency. Estimations of the EM direction-of-arrival (DOA) are attempted using the broadband digital interferometry. Some results agree with the optical observations, even though DOA estimation is problematic because of a very short antenna baseline and multiple pulses over a short time period, namely burst-type EM waveforms. The world's first lightning observations by means of space-borne VHF interferometry are achieved in this mission. This paper summarizes VITF instruments, the recorded VHF EM signals, and the results of DOA estimations by means of digital interferometry as a preliminary report after termination of the mission.
KW - Digital interferometry
KW - Direction-of-arrival estimation
KW - International Space Station
KW - Lightning discharge
KW - VHF EM radiation
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U2 - 10.1186/s40623-016-0522-1
DO - 10.1186/s40623-016-0522-1
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:84983085442
SN - 1343-8832
VL - 68
JO - Earth, Planets and Space
JF - Earth, Planets and Space
IS - 1
M1 - 145
ER -