A brief outline of the things that you should already be familiar with before starting to use this guide.
This set-by-step guide is intended to introduce you to the ways of working with EISCAT data on the project computers at RAL.
It is assumed that, before you get to this point, you should already have some basic understanding of solar-terrestrial physics, and some idea of what the EISCAT radars consist of and how they work. The EISCAT radars themselves are relatively well-documented, while there is also a range of websites which seek to explain solar-terrestrial physics at a basic level.
EISCAT data are recorded as complex autocorrelation functions, generally in the form of lag profiles. In the subsequent data analysis, these are converted into frequency spectra of the radar backscatter. A basic knowledge of Fourier theory will be helpful for you to understand how the EISCAT data are received and how they are subsequently processed.
Assuming that you have the requisite understanding of the physics, you will also need a certain amount of computing knowledge to get the best from our services.
All of the EISCAT computers, whether used for running the radars or for analysing the data, run some flavour of unix. Hence you really need some basic knowledge of unix before you start, especially if you have only used windows PCs up to now. Fortunately a reasonable range of books and tutorial websites are available.
Since the year 2000, all of the EISCAT raw data have been recorded in Matlab format, and consequently much of the software that we use to work with the data is also written in Matlab. As well as being a very powerful tool for working with matrix-based data, Matlab also has some very nice abilities for data visualisation, as well as a range of powerful toolkits for specific purposes, such as signal processing and Fourier analysis. A basic knowledge of Matlab is therefore very helpful when working with the EISCAT data.
However, not all of our software is in Matlab - we also have software to suit those who prefer to program in C (or C++), FORTRAN and IDL. It is not essential for EISCAT users to be familiar with all of these, but if you are intending to develop your own programs to work with EISCAT data, then it might be useful to be familiar with at least one of these widely-used languages.