A Flexible, Open-Source, Towed, Coherent, Software-Defined Ice-Penetrating Radar System

Ice-penetrating radars are a valuable tool for studying subsurface processes and conditions on Earth’s ice sheets. Vast amounts of ice-penetrating radar data have been collected from coherent chirped airborne ice-penetrating radar systems. Operating these airborne radar sounders is resource intensive, requiring large teams and significant financial resources. Here, we present a coherent chirped ground-based ice-penetrating radar system that can leverage the wealth of processing methods built for coherent chirped airborne radar data at a much lower cost. Our system is based on a commercially available software-defined radio (SDR) and open-source radar code platform, enabling widespread community adoption and use of the system. Furthermore, use of the SDR platform increases flexibility of the system and allows for easy reconfiguration of specific intrinsic radar and survey parameters. We present the architecture of our system alongside data it collected on the McMurdo Ice Shelf in Antarctica and at Summit Station in Greenland. We estimate the bed echo SNR it would achieve throughout Antarctica, which can be used to guide survey design. Finally, we discuss potential future system architectures which the system can be easily adapted to.