THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 1 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Ground Based Observatories (GBO) Engineering Peer Review Oct. 17, 2003 Field Site Deployment/Operations Mike Greffen and Brian Jackel University of Calgary

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 2 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Outline Communication –tests –data rates Sites –Fort Smith –Prince George –Lac de Gras –Northern hazards

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 3 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 “Near-by” site locations Lac de Gras Whitehorse Prince George Athabasca Edmonton Calgary Fort Smith Fort Simpson Fort Smith Calgary – Fort Smith: 1600 km, gravel road for last 70km.

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 4 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Fort Smith test HSi system installation on October 29, Mike Greffen and Brian Jackel will be present for testing existing CANOPUS site “tee” data stream from mags, riometer, scanning photometer (no ASI) on-site logging real-time link to Calgary and Edmonton

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 5 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Telesat HSi coverage

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 6 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Telesat HSi UDP packets RFC768: “This protocol provides a procedure for application programs to send messages to other programs with a minimum of protocol mechanism. The protocol is transaction oriented, and delivery and duplicate protection are not guaranteed. Applications requiring ordered reliable delivery of streams of data should use the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).”

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 7 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Telesat HSi TCP packets RFC793: “TCP is a connection-oriented, end-to-end reliable protocol designed to fit into a layered hierarchy of protocols which support multi-network applications.... Very few assumptions are made as to the reliability of the communication protocols below the TCP layer. TCP assumes it can obtain a simple, potentially unreliable datagram service from the lower level protocols. In principle, the TCP should be able to operate above a wide spectrum of communication systems ranging from hard-wired connections to packet-switched or circuit-switched networks.”

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 8 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Imager data rates Raw image frames: 256x bit values. PNG compression reduces this to 90 kbytes/frame (70%). A 5-second frame rate will produce 150 kbps or 60 Mbytes/hour. Thumbnail frames: 20x20 8-bit values plus header information (roughly 50 bytes). GZIP compression reduces this to 270 bytes/frame (60%). A 5-second frame rate will produce 430 bps or 190 kbytes/hour. System status: currently logging approx. 10 kbytes every 5 minutes, or 100 kbytes/hour. Essential information is much lower, roughly 10 kbytes/hour or 20 bps.

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 9 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Prince George (UNBC) site University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) at Prince George easy access direct internet connection good local support moderate light pollution not suitable for mags Good “dry run”, starting place to identify better sites

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 10 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Prince George enclosure

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 11 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Lac de Gras site

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 12 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Site List

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 13 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Cold and dark

THEMIS/GBO Engineering Peer Review 14 UCB, Oct. 17, 2003 Deployment hazards weather site access uncertain permafrost dome ice cables/connectors local residents vandalism firearms snowmobiles wildlife polar bears cable eating critters itchy caribou