New low power pulse compressed ionosonde at Gibilmanna Ionospheric Observatory

A digital low power pulse compressed ionosonde was developed at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia
(INGV), Rome, Italy. The aim of this Advanced Ionospheric Sounder, AIS-INGV, is to reduce the transmitted
power and, consequently, weight, size, power consumption and hardware complexity. To compensate the
power reduction the most advanced HF radar techniques such as the pulse compression and a phase coherent integration
are used. The ionosonde is completely programmable and a PC supports the data acquisition, control, storage
and on-line processing. The first prototype was installed at Gibilmanna Ionospheric Observatory (Sicily), an
interesting location in the center of Mediterranean area. The new ionosonde will contribute to ionospheric database
and real time knowledge of South European ionospheric conditions for space weather applications. In this work the
first results (ionograms and autoscaled characteristics) are presented and briefly discussed.