Status and future of the BRAMS meteor radio forward scatter network

BRAMS (Belgian RAdio Meteor Stations) is a network using forward scatter of radio waves on ionized meteor trails to detect and study meteoroids. It is made of a dedicated transmitter and of 50 receiving stations located in or near Belgium. The transmitter emits a circularly polarized CW radio wave with no modulation at a frequency of 49.97 MHz. One of the receiving stations is an interferometer using the Jones configuration.

In terms of infrastructure, we will present the current status of the network as well as recent and planned upgrades. Since begin of 2024, the transmitted CW power has increased from ~130 W to ~ 350 W. A second interferometer is currently being installed in the North of Belgium.  We also have plans to install a second transmitter emitting at a frequency of 49.971 MHz, which would produce meteor echoes in the audio bandwidth of our current receivers and would then double the number of pairs transmitter-receivers.

A summary about methods to reconstruct meteoroid trajectory and speed using BRAMS data will be provided.  The accuracy of the reconstruction is greatly improved when data from the interferometer are available, justifying the installation of the second interferometer in the Limburg region, where many receiving stations already exist.

The recent work on trajectory reconstruction has opened possibilities for many scientific applications in the future. These include

• studies of meteoroid deceleration (using the fact that speed can be measured at different altitudes along the meteoroid path),
• a systematic comparison of BRAMS radio data and optical observations from many networks such as GMN or CAMS-BeNeLux,
• the study of the ionization profile along the meteoroid path since each receiving station samples a different region along the meteoroid path,
• the determination of MLT wind speeds using a forward scatter system.

All these applications will be shortly discussed, trying to emphasize specificities that can be brought by a forward scatter system such as BRAMS.