Measurement of Plasma Resonance in Radio Reflections from Meteor Trails

Supervisor: Dr. Peter Brown

Project Description (Abstract):

This project involves measuring the resonance effects in backscattering of radio waves form meteor trails. The amplitude enhancement and phase changes associated with resonant scattering will be measured using linearly polarized radio waves reflecting from trails of known orientation. This information will be compared with scattering theory and will be used to estimate the initial size and rate of expansion shortly after the trail is formed. Meteor echo measurements from the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR) will be used at multiple frequencies to quantify this resonant behavior. 

 The student will use existing code written in C to analyse the time varying phase and amplitude of radar meteor echoes. Development of test code in Python/Matlab will be used to explore the associated polarization effects.

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