Documentation for backscatter¶
Overview¶
backscatter contains various packages to process and analyze SuperDARN data. This package aims to make it easier for users to use, modify, or understand the software needed to process data compared to the aging RST C code package.
While people are free to contribute new analysis code, the main goals of backscatter are to offer the following:
A way to read and write all SuperDARN DMAP formatted files
Processing of .rawacf files into .fitacf files
Processing of .fitacf files into .mapfiles needed to produce convection map plots
Installation¶
backscatter can be installed or used in a couple of different ways.
The package can be cloned from https://github.com/SuperDARNCanada/backscatter. In order to work with the package one can simply enter the directory and work from there, or add it to the Python path.
As development of this package is ongoing, I highly recommend installing this package within a virtual environment. backscatter can be installed as a package by running
python setup.py install from within the directory OR
via pip VCS install by running pip install git+git://github.com/SuperDARNCanada/backscatter.git#egg=backscatter without having to clone anything!
backscatter makes use of configuration files at import time, and installation creates a system wide configuration file in /etc/backscatter as well as the user’s home directory.
The setup scripts have dependency handling in them, but in case that fails or if you choose not to install, the following dependencies are needed:
Python 3
setuptools
configparser
Numpy >= v1.8
Note that depending on your system, installation may require root privileges.
Usage¶
When importing backscatter, the package will attempt to locate a configuration file in the current directory firstly, the user’s home directory secondly, and /etc/backscatter thirdly. This allows a system wide configuration for standard operation while allowing each user to override any options they choose.
backscatter also requires a folder containing the hdw.dat files for each radar somewhere on the system. The location can be set in the configuration file with the default being /usr/local/hdw. Please clone https://github.com/SuperDARN/hdw.git to /usr/local, or to another directory and reflect the change in your configuration files. Backscatter will fail to import if it can’t find the hardware files.
Once successfully imported, you can start using package contents in your scripts.
If installed, backscatter can also be used in a command line way that can be used for batch processing, or as a replacement for RST commands in current scripts. For example, to use fitacf as a utility from command line we can run python -m backscatter.fitacf in_file out_file from anywhere.