Raw WAV data from the BRAMS network

Description of the network

BRAMS (Belgian RAdio Meteor Stations) is a meteor radio forward scatter network located in Belgium and neighboring countries.
The transmitter is located in Dourbes and emits a Continuous Wave (CW) circularly polarized signal at a frequency of 49.97 MHz and with a power of approximately 340 Watts.
Receiving stations use a 3-elements Yagi antenna set up vertically and either an analog (ICOM-R75 or AR5001) or SDR (RSP2 or RSPDx) type receiver. Signals from the antenna are combined with a signal produced by the BRAMS calibrator at 49.9705 MHz before entering the receiving chain. Sampling frequencies are 5512 Hz (for analog-type receivers) or 6048 Hz (for SDR-type receivers). Data are coded on 16 bits. Local Oscillator of the receivers is set up at 49.969 MHz such that beacon signal appears at 1 KHz and calibrator signal appears at 1.5 KHz. ICOM-R75 are not stabilized in frequency so beacon and calibrator frequencies can slowly drift in time. BRAMS data are synchronized using PPS (Pulse Per Second) coming from GPS data.

Raw data format

Raw data are saved in WAV format. Size of a single WAV file is approximately 3.3 MB. Metadata are saved in custom chunks:

• BRA1 contains information about sampling rate, local oscillator frequency, start of the file, number of PPS, beacon latitude, longitude and altitude, frequency, power and polarization of the transmitter, ID latitude, longitude and altitude of the receiving antenna, code of the transmitter (BEDOUR) and of the receiving station (e.g. BEOUDS).
• BRA2 contains the PPS

Filename format

Filenames format : RAD_BEDOUR_20260530_0000_BEJALH_SYS001. First 3 characters refer to radio observations, characters 5 to 10 refer to the transmitter code, characters 12 to 19 and 21 to 24 refer to the observing time, characters 26 à 31 refer to the receiving station code, and characters 33 to 38 refer to antenna ID.

Data are aggregated by day and per receiving station as ZIP files.