Vaisala IRIS DATASHEET

Vaisala Sigmet Interactive Radar
Information System IRIS™

In today’s business world, companies
and their high-tech products come
and go in the blink of an eye. That’s
why we are proud that IRIS™ is the
longest-selling software system for
weather radar – ever.

IRIS™ has been shipped as a product
for over 20 years.

IRIS™ makes any weather radar
better. Vaisala is totally focused on
providing the highest quality signal
and data processing solutions, and
the system support to make it all
work.

At each step, operators have concise
interactive menus to monitor and
manage the process. These menus
make it easy to trace data all the way
from the radar receiver to the end
user. An entire radar operational plan
from scanning to product distribution
can be designed in an hour and
implemented in seconds.

IRIS™ is the network...
IRISnet makes it work!

From software installation to
remote control and monitoring,
IRIS™ provides logical, easy-to-use
tools for secure “single-seat” radar
network management. The IRISnet
tool is the top-level management tool.
Color coded icons display radar and
analysis sites and show status at a
glance. Operators can point and click
to access the IRIS™ tools for any site
for conguration and management.
Open the utilities menu to perform
radar test and calibration. The IRIS™
menus can be “connected” to any
IRIS™ server node to control radar
scanning, product generation and
output.

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Benefits

Single-seat network

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administration, testing,
upgrade and maintenance- no
need to go to the radar.

Local and remote control with

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automatic fault alerts and
message logging.

Networked real-time display.

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Graphical utilities such as

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IRISnet for easy radar and
network monitoring and
maintenance.

Built-in simulators for testing

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and training.

Automatic operational mode

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switching in response to
changing weather conditions.

Comprehensive suite of output

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products based on volume
scanning and single sweep.

Composite for networked

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radars into selectable
projections and “virtual” radar
sites.

Ecient client-server network

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communications and scalable
data communications with
data compression.

Standard TCP/IP networking

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approach- no custom
communication protocols.

Support for a wide variety of

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standards-based peripherals
such as PostScript printers,
DAT tape drives and DVDs.

Optional 3D display shows the

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“big picture”.

Optional Real-time

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dual-Doppler.

Seamlessly reads all older IRIS™

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data files.

Radar Analysis

Troubleshooting... no
problem with IRIS™

The automated monitoring in IRIS™
functions as a “watchdog” that
constantly monitors the health of
the system. This frees maintenance
personnel from having to make
constant checks of the system.
Should a problem occur, IRIS
may alert users and maintenance
technicians. The comprehensive
system maintenance tools in IRIS™
make it easy for maintenance
personnel to isolate and solve the
problem.

The Radar Status Menu collects all of
the hardware and software status,
as well as key controls, into a single
place – no need to page through
several menus to determine the
overall health of the system. Since it
is an IRIS™ client/server menu, you
can connect the Radar Status Menu
to view any system on the network.

Should a problem occur, the IRIS™
Watchdog process sends an alert
pop-up message with an audio “beep”
or even a voice synthesis message.
The BITEX utility is used to congure
what parameters are monitored and
the severity of the messages. To
assist with troubleshooting, faults are
logged on disk in the IRIS™ Message
log so that there is a record even if
the system were to lose power.

ANTENNA provides completely
independent radar and antenna
control or sun tracking.

The ASCOPE utility is Vaisala’s
acclaimed signal processor support
utility that provides complete
control and plotting for all signal
processor parameters. Advanced
features include FFT, random phase
and data recording and playback
of any data- even I and Q. Signal
simulator provides the ability to test
signal processor congurations and
algorithms on “real-world” signals.

TM

Radar process

The radar process provides
exibility for conguring and
optimizing complex automatic
scanning and signal processing
strategies.

A mix of TASKS are dened for an
active scan. Networked real time
display provides instant feedback
on the progress of a scan. You can
create and save an unlimited number
of schedules for different automatic
operational modes. The scanning
schedule can even be switched
automatically in response to
changing weather. This is particularly
useful for air terminal wind shear
detection.

Display

IRIS™ supports automatic or
interactive output to a variety of
devices. The Quick Look Window,
which is a 4th generation graphical
user inter-face design, is forecaster­tested and proven to be easy-to-use
with minimal training. Features such
as geographic cursor, home points,
interactive cross-section, forecast
projection and track/annotation make
the Quick Look Window a powerful
tool for forecasters and analysts.
What’s more, the Quick Look Window
can be exported over the network to
any workstation that is running X­even PC’s running Windows or NT.

IRIS™ supports archive/playback on
DAT, DVD, as well as multi-GB hard
disk archive. System managers can
take advantage of output to other
networked systems in a variety of
formats including IRIS™ Native, JPEG,
GIF, TIF, BMP and PostScript. Color
postScript printers are supported.
These formats make it easy to have
automatic updates for web pages or
other external applications.

Product generation

The ingest les generated by the
radar process are the starting point
for the product generator. IRIS™
has the most comprehensive suite
of products available in the industry
today (see product summary page).
The product conguration and
product scheduler menus give
operators full control over the details
of the product generation and the
mix of products for each operational
mode. All products are made in the
original polar coordinates of the
radar data with correction for earth
curvature and full interpolation.
Resolution and map projection are
selectable.

The IRISnet Network management tool
lets you see at a glance the status of all
radar & display systems. Operators can
travel the network with a few clicks of
their mouse.