Building a Solar Radio Spectrometer

This paper describes a project that the radio astronomy lab has done at the Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences, and Technology (SAASST) to integrate the solar radio astronomy research into the space weather awareness aspect. The project is the construction of a Solar Radio Spectrometer that is the first of its kind in the Middle East region. This system was built to receive frequencies ranging from 25.5-55.5 MHz by building a folded inverted V dipole two meters above the ground and using a software-defined radio dongle (SDR) as a receiver. This solar radio spectrometer was constructed to allow advanced studies of the solar radio emission within the upper high frequency (HF) band, where the terrestrial radio interference sources have minimal values. The bandwidth of the system is 30MHz, which allows researchers to distinguish between the different types of radio bursts. Radio Sky Spectrograph is the software that monitors the received data as a dynamic spectrogram chart that contains all recorded radio signals, including their metadata. The SAASST solar radio spectrometer was installed in December 2021, and the data analysis started shortly after.