Construction was completed during summer 2013 on the Telescope Array RAdar (TARA) bi-static radar observatory for Ultra-High-Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR). TARA is co-located with the Telescope Array, the largest "conventional" cosmic ray detector in the Northern Hemisphere, in radio-quiet Western Utah. TARA employs an 8 MW Effective Radiated Power (ERP) VHF transmitter and smart receiver system based on a 250 MS/s data acquisition system in an effort to detect the scatter of sounding radiation by UHECR-induced atmospheric ionization. TARA seeks to demonstrate bi-static radar as a useful new remote sensing technique for UHECRs. In this report, we describe the design and performance of the TARA transmitter and receiver systems.

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TARA (Telescope Array Radar) is a cosmic ray radar detection experiment colocated with Telescope Array, the conventional surface scintillation detector (SD) and fluorescence telescope detector (FD) near Delta, Utah, U.S.A. The TARA detector combines a 40 kW, 54.1 MHz VHF transmitter and high-gain transmitting antenna which broadcasts the radar carrier over the SD array and within the FD field of view, towards a 250 MS/s DAQ receiver. TARA has been collecting data since 2013 with the primary goal of observing the radar signatures of extensive air showers (EAS). Simulations indicate that echoes are expected to be short in duration (∼ 10 µs) and exhibit rapidly changing frequency, with rates on the order 1 MHz/µs. The EAS radar cross-section (RCS) is currently unknown although it is the subject of over 70 years of speculation. A novel signal search technique is described in which the expected radar echo of a particular air shower is used as a matched filter template and compared to waveforms obtained by triggering the radar DAQ using the Telescope Array fluorescence detector. No evidence for the scattering of radio frequency radiation by EAS is obtained to date. We report the first quantitative RCS upper limits using EAS that triggered the Telescope Array Fluorescence Detector.

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Cosmic rays are the highest-energy observable particles in the universe. Their study opens a new frontier for scientists to better understand the nature of the universe. This paper reports our study of a bistatic radar approach that is being developed for remote sensing of cosmic-ray induced air showers. In this context, we propose a robust detection technique based on timefrequency domain for the received radar echoes. These echoes are modeled as linear-downward chirp signals, characterized by very short sweep periods, low energies, and corrupted by non-stationary and non-Gaussian background noise. In addition, the related parameters of the received echoes are variable within some expected ranges, determined by the physical parameters of the air showers. In this paper, we explore the performance of the proposed detection method through an extensive theoretical analysis. We derive formulae for probability of the correct detection, as well as false-alarm rate. Numerical simulations and experimental results that corroborate our analysis are also presented.