The Plasma Wave Instrument on the Polar spacecraft is designed to prov
ide measurements of plasma waves in the Earth's polar regions over the
frequency range from 0.1 Hz to 800 kHz. Three orthogonal electric dip
ole antennas are used to detect electric fields, two in the spin plane
and one aligned along the spacecraft spin axis. A magnetic loop anten
na and a triaxial magnetic search coil antenna are used to detect magn
etic fields. Signals from these antennas are processed by five receive
r systems: a wideband receiver, a high-frequency waveform receiver, a
low-frequency waveform receiver, two multichannel analyzers; and a pai
r of sweep frequency receivers. Compared to previous plasma wave instr
uments, the Polar plasma wave instrument has several new capabilities.
These include (1) an expanded frequency range to improve coverage of
both low- and high-frequency wave phenomena, (2) the ability to simult
aneously capture signals from six orthogonal electric and magnetic fie
ld sensors, and (3) a digital wideband receiver with up to 8-bit resol
ution and sample rates as high as 249k samples s(-1).