How Suncal Works

Solar scans can provide you with an antenna pointing offset, antenna beam width measurements, receive chain and LDR offset calibration.

Variation in the solar flux of the sun has little effect on the antenna pointing and beamwidth measurements. Changes in the solar flux density affect the power measured by the receiver. However, you can use independent measurements of the solar flux density to verify changes in relative peak power and to calculate the antenna gain for a radar system.

Suncal operation is broken down into 3 phases, each of which produces an output used by the next phase:

1. The scan phase runs the antenna and collects data which is stored in IRIS format BEAM products.
2. The process phase reads in the BEAM product(s) and calculates a results file.
3. The update phase reads the results file and interactively allows the operator to update the radar calibration.