DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF AN AUTOMATED 10-CHANNEL SOLAR RADIOMETER INSTRUMENT

An automated multichannel solar radiometer ha!, been designed and fabr icated by the Atmospheric Remote Sensing Laboratory at The University of Arizona. The automated radiometer has 10 separate silicon-photodiod e-based channels that allow near-simultaneous solar spectral measureme nts through narrow bandpass filters (approximately 10 nm) from the vis ible to near-IR regions. The photodiode detectors are temperature stab ilized using a heating temperature controller circuit. The instrument is pointed toward the sun via an autotracking system that actively tra cks the sun with a +/- 0.05 degrees tracking accuracy. The instrument can continuously collect data for about 22 h at once per minute sample rate. This paper presents instrument design features as well as some performance and experimental results for the automated solar radiomete r.