Roquetes, Spain

The Roquetes platform hosts an observing infrastructure for monitoring the state of the ionosphere in the Observatori de l'Ebre (OE). The first measurements began on 26 March 1955, when the first ionospheric sounder in Spain was inaugurated. Several instruments had been working in the OE ever since 1955, the current instrument is a DPS-4D ionospheric sounder, which was developed and built by Lowell Digisonde International in collaboration with UMass Lowell Center for Atmospheric Research. Routinely, it performs an ionospheric sounding every 5 minutes, but this cadence can be adjusted for specific campaigns. The instrument has a transmitter antenna, an integrated transceiver package (control unit), and a network of receiver antennas formed by four crossed magnetic dipole antennas. This station, which is singular in the Iberian Peninsula, contributes to the world-wide ionospheric observation network GIRO, and provides information for the products of the European network DIAS and products developed by the OE team.