MARDOC (Modular Antenna Radar Designs Of Canada) is a company which specializes in development and deployment of radars with scientific applications. We particularly work with atmospheric and meteor radars, but can also supply products for general types of target-tracking, including aircraft and ships.

Our current primary productions are a windprofiler radar called WindTtracker, and an all-sky meteor system called ComMet/21i ("ComMet" in short-hand). These are discussed in further detail below.

Most recently, our instruments have incorporated new architecture including direct-conversion receivers, digitization at frequencies comparable to the carrier frequency, and real-time pulse deconvolution. These processes allow higher resolution, software linearity correction, and ultimately lower costs. (e.g. see our paper here.))

The WindTtracker (Wind and Turbulence Tracker) is an atmospheric radar designed to measure wind speeds and directions, and turbulence strengths, throughout the lower atmosphere and into the stratosphere. It has applications in various types of atmospheric physics. It can measure wind speeds with a temporal resolution of minutes, and with a height coverage of typically 500 metres to 12 km altitude (greater altitudes can be reached with specially designed systems with greater transmitter power output). These radars can also be used in some cases to study winds and turbulence at altitudes of 60 to 90 km.

In particular we designed and built the radars of the O-QNet, a network of WindTtracker profiler radars which covered southern Ontario and Western Quebec in Canada. Data from these radars were sent hourly to forecasting sites in Canada, the UK and the USA and used in operational forecasts. Some of the O-QNet sites have been closed, especially those in Quebec, to allow consolidation into the more populous areas of Ontario. One of or recent successes was development of methods to forecast tornadoes with 10-15 minutes warning within this newer version of the O-QNet. A paper relating to this work can be found here: Tornado Prediction.

The link "Representative Real-time Displays" allows you to examine representative graphs of various radar-derived parameters. These are typical of displays which appear at various sites on the world-wide-web. Such graphs at these sites are usually updated hourly. You may request links to such real-time sites by sending us an email.

Another of our products, the ComMet/21i , is a meteor-detection and analysis instrument. This is a new cost-effective advance on the earlier SKiYMET radar, originally developed in collaboration with Genesis Software Pty. Ltd. of Australia, and which was deployed in Canada, The USA, Canada, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Australia, the Arctic, Antarctica and Ascension Island, among others. The radar can be used to not only monitor meteor entry fluxes and to determine shower radiants, but also to measure winds and temperatures in the 80-100 km altitude region.

More recently we have developed a special boundary-layer in Costa Rica, (see Boundary Layer Radar Applications.) and we have also developed systems for tracking ships, aircraft, and other man-made vehicles. Follow the links to the left to learn more about these radars.

We also build other miscellaneous antennas, such as clutter fences, which are used to reduce radio-interference from other nearby transmitters.