Infrastructure or equipment

IAP is running a number of specific interdisciplinary measurements and investigations. The IAP team operates ionosondes at the Pruhonice observatory since 1958 (digisonde since 2004). In 2009 the digisonde was upgraded to a latest model DPS4D. The Vertical Incidence (VI) measurements are manually checked. All real time data and value added products are accessible from http://147.231.47.3/ (manually scaled data on request).

In addition to the routine ionospheric sounding, the Pruhonice DPS4D performs Oblique Incidence soundings (OI) and plasma drift measurements in synchronous operation with selected DPS4D within the European region for the detection of Doppler shift and angle of arrival of perturbations inferred by TIDs. The dual frequency GPS receiver is also in operation at the observatory.

The IAP team designed, constructed and put into operation the international Continuous Doppler Sounding System (CDSS) co-located with ionosonde and microbarographs. The CDSS is unique in the world because of the continuous sounding and the uniform instrumentation including HW and SW. It enables permanent monitoring of lower ionosphere above different locations and gives information on the activity of atmospheric waves of different origin and their influence on ionosphere. Recently the team operates five networks of the CDSSs in the Czech Republic, two networks in South Africa, and one network in Argentina and Taiwan. Data of the CDSS measurements are available via http://datacenter.ufa.cas.cz/.

IAP operates electric field mill EFM-100 sensors produced by Boltek company to measure electric field at for localities in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The sensitivity/dynamic range of the sensor can be set by an external shunt resistor at the input amplifier. To prevent the saturation during thunderstorms, the dynamic range of the electric field measurement was set to ±165 kV/m at Lomnicky peak, Slovakia, whereas the range of about ±10 kV/m is used for measurements at the observatories of PanskaVes and Studenec in the Czech Republic. The response time of EFM-100 is about 0.1s. The raw data are stored with a 16 bit resolution and sampling frequency of 25 Hz to a dedicated data-logger with GPS time  stamps (developed at IAP, Prague). The real time for all four stations are available via web site http://datacenter.ufa.cas.cz/mlynky/.

In 2012 the IAP put into operation a powerful high capacity server and back up PC, which have been adapted for the mirroring of the international Digital Ionosonde Database (DIDBase), located in Lowell, USA. The machine enables users in the Czech Republic (researches, students, commercial users), as well as European ionospheric community to download requested ionospheric data in much shorter time, when comparing to the Lowell link (firebirdsql://147.231.75.90/ext/db/ib/didb).

All data, essential for analysis of the atmospheric wave dynamics and state of ionosphere (ionosonde data - ionograms obtained from worldwide ionospheric stations, more than 60-years-long ionospheric sounding archive from Pruhonice observatory, ionospheric drift data and skymaps; data of the CDSS network - spectrograms (rough and processed), GPS data-TEC values; and microbarograph data), are archived at the mirroring facility.