Determination of Filter Criteria for Micro-Meteor Observations by the Arecibo 430 MHz Incoherent Scatter Radar

Abstract

The paper discusses filtering of processed incoherent scatter radar (ISR) data, which was collected from the Arecibo 430 MHz ISR in order to detect meteors entering the ionosphere.  From the ISR data received, we found that extracting only data from altitudes of 80 km to 130 km and velocities between 2 km/s and 90 km/s provides a good model of meteor phenomena. Variances in the observed phase shift in excess of 1 radian and abnormally large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were found to be indicative of interference. These filtering criteria produce accurate data on micro-meteor trends and could be used to determine a mathematical model for micro-meteors.