Cosine Bench Rebuilt, and Upcoming Hardware Advancements

Authors

Sheffer, Benjamin Ross — Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
Hodges, Gary B. — NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory

Category

ARM infrastructure

To fully characterize a Multi-Filter Rotating Shadowband Radiometer (MFRSR) requires, among other procedures, careful measurements of the sensor responsivity at prescribed azimuth and elevation angles -- we call this the cosine correction. The measurements are taken with an ARM-built apparatus known as the cosine bench. Because of computer hardware and related software issues it stopped functioning about two years ago. Several attempts were made at resurrecting the cosine bench with new hardware and updated software without success. Recently the software was rewritten from the ground up with Python, and cosine bench is again functioning with a user environment more friendly than its predecessor.

The mentor team plans another effort at designing a replacement heater controller board for the MFRSR. A rash of failed boards after a relatively long period with few failures is the motivation. Using the past experience along with new ideas, we believe a robust drop-in replacement can be built for relatively low cost. The benefit will be reduced work load for the field technicians, fewer DQPRs/DQRs, and greater instrument up-time.