Each sonde contains a high specification telemetry transmitter. The radio transmission from the sonde meets demanding radio requirements and can cope with long slant ranges, even as far as 300 km. The use of code-spreading, a method where link-errors can be readily detected and corrected and other modern digital radio techniques such as interleaving which minimises the effect of burst errors, ensures that the data is reliably received at the distant ground station.
The continuous on-board measurements of all sensors and transmission of their data is performed in a time-window of less than one second. Additionally, in a spare channel, diagnostic information from the sonde’s on-board Built In Test (BIT) systems are transmitted, thus ensuring the data sent is reliable during the ascent.
Freely Programmable Frequency
Each Radiosondes can transmit in a narrow channel anywhere within the meteorological band (400 to 406 MHz). The sonde uses an on-board frequency synthesiser, which is automatically set to the desired transmission channel during initialisation.
The highly-sensitive ground station receiver system does not require a steered antenna and can receive valid data from sondes up to 300 km slant range using its compact dual antenna set.