Long-Range Lightning Interferometry Using Coherency

Abstract

Traditional lightning detection and location networks use the time of arrival (TOA) technique to locate lightning events with a single time stamp. This contribution introduces a simulation study to lay the foundation for new lightning location concepts. Here, a novel interferometric method is studied which expands the data use and maps lightning events into an area by using coherency. The amplitude waveform bank, which consists of averaged waveforms classified by their propagation distances, is first used to test interferometric methods. Subsequently, the study is extended to individual lightning event waveforms. Both amplitude and phase coherency of the analytic signal are used here to further develop the interferometric method. To determine a single location for the lightning event and avoid interference between the ground wave and the first skywave, two solutions are proposed: (1) use a small receiver network and (2) apply an impulse response function to the recorded waveforms, which uses an impulse to represent the lightning occurrence. Both methods effectively remove the first skywave interference. This study potentially helps to identify the lightning ground wave without interference from skywaves with a long-range low frequency (LF) network. It is planned to expand the simulation work with data reflecting a variety of ionospheric and geographic scenarios.