UHF Radar Sounding of Polar Ice Sheets

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Jie-Bang Yan
  • Joshua A. Nunn
  • Prasad Gogineni
  • Charles O'Neill
  • Christopher D. Simpson
  • Ryan A. Taylor
  • Daniel Steinhage
  • Dahl-Jensen, Dorthe
  • Heinrich Miller
  • Olaf Eisen

In this letter, we report on the design, development, and field operation of a surface-based multi-channel ultrawideband (UWB) ultrahigh frequency (UHF) radar to measure ice thickness, basal conditions, and ice-shelf bottom melt rates. The radar concept is based on the recent success in sounding shallow low-loss ice (similar to 1 km) and measuring the ice-shelf melt rates with a 600-900-MHz low-power radar, referred to as the accumulation radar. Our proposed radar system operates over the same frequency band, from 600 to 900 MHz, with a peak transmit power of 800 W. We used a large and lightweight 16 m x 17 m antenna array arranged in a Mills cross-configuration to obtain the required radar sensitivity to sound more than 3- kmthick ice and image the internal layers at a fine vertical resolution of about 60 cm. We used the system at the East Greenland Ice-coring Project (EGRIP) site in Summer 2018 to collect data over similar to 100 km of lines. We sounded about 2.8-km-thick ice with more than 40- dB signal-to-noise ratio and mapped the internal layers to a depth of almost 2.5 km. Our results show that an airborne or spaceborne radar operating at frequencies as high as 900 MHz with a large antenna array can be used to map large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

Original languageEnglish
JournalIEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters
Volume17
Issue number7
Pages (from-to)1173-1177
Number of pages5
ISSN1545-598X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2020

    Research areas

  • Ice, radar, sounder, ultrawideband (UWB)

ID: 271543371