Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications
Absorption of terahertz radiation by atmospheric water vapor is a serious impediment for radio astronomy and for long-distance communications. Transmission in the THz regime is dependent almost exclusively on atmospheric precipitable water vapor (PWV). Though much of the Earth has PWV that is too hi...
Published in: | IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology |
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2014
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Online Access: | https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zr7w6nd https://escholarship.org/content/qt1zr7w6nd/qt1zr7w6nd.pdf https://doi.org/10.1109/tthz.2013.2294018 |
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ftcdlib:oai:escholarship.org:ark:/13030/qt1zr7w6nd 2024-09-15T17:44:11+00:00 Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications Suen, Jonathan Y Fang, Michael T Lubin, Philip M 86 - 100 2014-01-01 application/pdf https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zr7w6nd https://escholarship.org/content/qt1zr7w6nd/qt1zr7w6nd.pdf https://doi.org/10.1109/tthz.2013.2294018 unknown eScholarship, University of California qt1zr7w6nd https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zr7w6nd https://escholarship.org/content/qt1zr7w6nd/qt1zr7w6nd.pdf doi:10.1109/tthz.2013.2294018 public IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology, vol 4, iss 1 Atmospheric modeling radio astronomy satellite communication satellite ground station submillimeter wave communication submillimeter wave propagation Optical Physics Electrical and Electronic Engineering article 2014 ftcdlib https://doi.org/10.1109/tthz.2013.2294018 2024-06-28T06:28:20Z Absorption of terahertz radiation by atmospheric water vapor is a serious impediment for radio astronomy and for long-distance communications. Transmission in the THz regime is dependent almost exclusively on atmospheric precipitable water vapor (PWV). Though much of the Earth has PWV that is too high for good transmission above 200 GHz, there are a number of dry sites with very low attenuation. We performed a global analysis of PWV with high-resolution measurements from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) on two NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites over the year of 2011. We determined PWV and cloud cover distributions and then developed a model to find transmission and atmospheric radiance as well as necessary integration times in the various windows. We produced global maps over the common THz windows for astronomical and satellite communications scenarios. Notably, we show that, up through 1 THz, systems could be built in excellent sites of Chile, Greenland, and the Tibetan Plateau, while Antarctic performance is good to 1.6 THz. For a ground-to-space communication link up through 847 GHz, we found several sites in the Continental United States where mean atmospheric attenuation is less than 40 dB, which is not an insurmountable challenge for a link. © 2013 IEEE. Article in Journal/Newspaper Antarc* Antarctic Greenland University of California: eScholarship IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology 4 1 86 100 |
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Open Polar |
collection |
University of California: eScholarship |
op_collection_id |
ftcdlib |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Atmospheric modeling radio astronomy satellite communication satellite ground station submillimeter wave communication submillimeter wave propagation Optical Physics Electrical and Electronic Engineering |
spellingShingle |
Atmospheric modeling radio astronomy satellite communication satellite ground station submillimeter wave communication submillimeter wave propagation Optical Physics Electrical and Electronic Engineering Suen, Jonathan Y Fang, Michael T Lubin, Philip M Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications |
topic_facet |
Atmospheric modeling radio astronomy satellite communication satellite ground station submillimeter wave communication submillimeter wave propagation Optical Physics Electrical and Electronic Engineering |
description |
Absorption of terahertz radiation by atmospheric water vapor is a serious impediment for radio astronomy and for long-distance communications. Transmission in the THz regime is dependent almost exclusively on atmospheric precipitable water vapor (PWV). Though much of the Earth has PWV that is too high for good transmission above 200 GHz, there are a number of dry sites with very low attenuation. We performed a global analysis of PWV with high-resolution measurements from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) on two NASA Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites over the year of 2011. We determined PWV and cloud cover distributions and then developed a model to find transmission and atmospheric radiance as well as necessary integration times in the various windows. We produced global maps over the common THz windows for astronomical and satellite communications scenarios. Notably, we show that, up through 1 THz, systems could be built in excellent sites of Chile, Greenland, and the Tibetan Plateau, while Antarctic performance is good to 1.6 THz. For a ground-to-space communication link up through 847 GHz, we found several sites in the Continental United States where mean atmospheric attenuation is less than 40 dB, which is not an insurmountable challenge for a link. © 2013 IEEE. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Suen, Jonathan Y Fang, Michael T Lubin, Philip M |
author_facet |
Suen, Jonathan Y Fang, Michael T Lubin, Philip M |
author_sort |
Suen, Jonathan Y |
title |
Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications |
title_short |
Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications |
title_full |
Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications |
title_fullStr |
Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications |
title_full_unstemmed |
Global Distribution of Water Vapor and Cloud Cover—Sites for High-Performance THz Applications |
title_sort |
global distribution of water vapor and cloud cover—sites for high-performance thz applications |
publisher |
eScholarship, University of California |
publishDate |
2014 |
url |
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zr7w6nd https://escholarship.org/content/qt1zr7w6nd/qt1zr7w6nd.pdf https://doi.org/10.1109/tthz.2013.2294018 |
op_coverage |
86 - 100 |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctic Greenland |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctic Greenland |
op_source |
IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology, vol 4, iss 1 |
op_relation |
qt1zr7w6nd https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1zr7w6nd https://escholarship.org/content/qt1zr7w6nd/qt1zr7w6nd.pdf doi:10.1109/tthz.2013.2294018 |
op_rights |
public |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1109/tthz.2013.2294018 |
container_title |
IEEE Transactions on Terahertz Science and Technology |
container_volume |
4 |
container_issue |
1 |
container_start_page |
86 |
op_container_end_page |
100 |
_version_ |
1810491573826224128 |