Extremely low frequency band station for natural electromagnetic noise measurement

A new permanent ELF measurement station has been deployed in Sierra Nevada, Spain. It is composed of two magnetometers, oriented NS and EW, respectively. At 10 Hz, their sensitivity is 19 μV/pT and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is 28 dB for a time-varying signal of 1 pT, the expected field amplitude in Sierra Nevada. The station operates for frequencies below 24 Hz. The magnetometers, together with their corresponding electronics, have been specifically designed to achieve such an SNR for small signals. They are based on high-resolution search coils with ferromagnetic core and 106 turns, operating in limited geometry configuration. Different system noise sources are considered, and a stud…

Solar storm effects during Saint Patrick's Days in 2013 and 2015 on the Schumann resonances measured by the ELF station at Sierra Nevada (Spain)

TLM Nodes: A New Look at an Old Problem

In this paper, an alternative perspective on the transmission line modeling (TLM) method concepts to unify previous work is presented. The procedure begins by discretizing Maxwell’s equations and proposing TLM equivalent models. Node voltage and mesh current definitions are provided in terms of link line contributions, compatible with stub currents and voltages. They allow obtaining an expression that relates incident and reflected pulses with no other condition required. With this unified approach, modeling of other situations is straightforward. 2-D cases, source implementation, and anisotropic media are described and numerically tested.

Design & Optimization of Large Cylindrical Radomes with Subcell and Non-Orthogonal FDTD Meshes Combined with Genetic Algorithms

The word radome is a contraction of radar and dome. The function of radomes is to protect antennas from atmospheric agents. Radomes are closed structures that protect the antennas from environmental factors such as wind, rain, ice, sand, and ultraviolet rays, among others. The radomes are passive structures that introduce return losses, and whose proper design would relax the requirement of complex front-end elements such as amplifiers. The radome consists mostly in a thin dielectric curved shape cover and sometimes needs to be tuned using metal inserts to cancel the capacitive performance of the dielectric. Radomes are in the near field region of the antennas and a full wave analysis of th…

Kinetic Interaction of Cold and Hot Protons With an Oblique EMIC Wave Near the Dayside Reconnecting Magnetopause

STR acknowledges support from the ISSI international team Cold plasma of ionospheric origin in the Earth's magnetosphere and of the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) of Spain (grant FIS2017-90102-R). Research at IRAP was supported by CNRS, CNES and the University of Toulouse. JHL and DLT acknowledge support from NASA Grant 80NSSC18K1378. RED was supported by NASA grants 80NSSC19K070 and 80NSSC19K0254. MA was supported by SNSA Grant 56/18. SKV and RCA acknowledge support from NASA Grant 80NSSC19K0270. Work performed by MMS team members is supported by NASA contract NNG04EB99C.

A New Approach to the Modeling of Anisotropic Media with the Transmission Line Matrix Method

A reformulation of the Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) method is presented to model non-dispersive anisotropic media. Two TLM-based solutions to solve this problem can already be found in the literature, each one with an interesting feature. One can be considered a more conceptual approach, close to the TLM fundamentals, which identifies each TLM in Maxwell’s equations with a specific line. But this simplicity is achieved at the expense of an increase in the memory storage requirements of a general situation. The second existing solution is a more powerful and general formulation that avoids this increase in memory storage. However, it is based on signal processing techniques and considerabl…