Application of inverse theory for high spatial resolution reconstructions of thermospheric vector wind fields from Doppler shifts measured by a ground-based network of all-sky Fabry-Perot interferometers

Several types of all-sky viewing Fabry-Perot Interferometers (FPI) have been developed since the 1990s for ground-based remote sensing of thermospheric winds. The Scanning Doppler Imager (SDI) is one such instrument, which provides temporally simultaneous line-of-sight observations from hundreds of independent look directions per instrument exposure. A geographically distributed network of such instruments increases spatial coverage and, at many locations, also provides overlapping observations along multiple independent lines-of-sight. Together, these characteristics significantly increase the density and fidelity that is possible for reconstructed thermospheric vector wind fields, compared to a traditional narrow-field FPI, but at the cost of complexity and difficulty.
Presently, we describe an application of inverse theory to reconstruct three-component vector thermospheric neutral wind fields using data from multiple SDI instruments. The salient features of the method used here are ...