Polar PWI: Low-Frequency Plasma Wave Fields at 0.01-Second Resolution

Data from the Polar spacecraft's Low-Frequency Waveform Receiver (LFWR), sampled at 100 Hz. The dataset provides calibrated time-series measurements of three orthogonal electric and three orthogonal magnetic field components in a magnetic field-aligned coordinate system, band-limited from 0.1 to 25 Hz. It was produced by NASA and is referenced in a 1995 Space Science Reviews publication.

Use Cases

• Analyzing wave propagation and polarization based on the three orthogonal electric and magnetic field components.
• Studying low-frequency magnetospheric phenomena like ULF waves based on the 0.1-25 Hz frequency range.
• Investigating wave-particle coupling mechanisms using the magnetic field-aligned coordinate system.
• Developing or validating signal processing techniques for calibrated, bandpass-filtered time-series data.

Strengths

• Provides simultaneous sampling of six channels at 100 samples per second.
• Data is calibrated using an FFT process on 256 or 464 values, as described.
• Has a dynamic range of approximately 72 dB with fixed gain.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Magnetic field components are given in nT/Sec rather than nT, requiring additional processing for some analyses.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Collected by the Polar spacecraft's Plasma Wave Instrument (PWI), specifically its Low-Frequency Waveform Receiver.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 07:35:37.626156; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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