VLF monitoring system for characterizing the lower region ionospheric layer

• Main Authors: Jusoh, M.H (Author), Mokhtar, W.Z.A.W (Author), Rahim, S.A.E.A (Author), Taat, A. (Author), Zakaria, N.A (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Electromagnetics Academy 2018
• Subjects: Antennas; Australia; Data acquisition; Data acquisition system; Diurnal variation; Dual frequency; Earthquake events; Ionosphere; Ionospheric measurement; Low pass filters; Monitoring; Monitoring system; Solar activity; Solar energy; Very low frequency
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher; View in Scopus
• ISBN: 19378726 (ISSN)
• DOI: 10.2528/pierm17112802

The main objective of the current work is to develop a Very Low Frequency (VLF) monitoring system for characterizing low layer ionosphere. Low layer ionosphere is important for communication, and some researchers stressed that lower layer ionosphere can be a precursor to earthquake event. The VLF monitoring system composed of a 1-m antenna, a preamplifier to amplify the signal, an ADC converter and a data acquisition system. The optimization of 1-m antenna received dual frequencies 19.2 kHz and 19.8 kHz from South Vijayanarayanam, India and North West Cape, Australia, respectively. Subsequently, a low pass filter was designed in the preamplifier to pass VLF signals from 0{30 kHz. The results revealed that the system was able to characterize diurnal variation: sunrise and sunset and detect changes in the lower layer ionosphere region due to Solar activity. © 2018, Electromagnetics Academy. All rights reserved.