300 Rhodes Hall
Phone: (607) 255-7121
Fax: (607) 255-6236
E-mail: donf@ ece.cornell.edu  

B. Eng. Phys. 1956; Ph.D. 1960 (both Cornell degrees)

After receiving the doctoral degree, Farley spent a year at Cambridge University, a year at Chalmers University in Sweden, and then six years in Peru at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory, near Lima, before returning to the United States and joining the Cornell faculty in 1967. He returned to Sweden in 1985 for a year as the Tage Erlander Visiting Professor at the Uppsala Ionospheric Observatory. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the American Geophysical Union, the International Scientific Radio Union (URSI), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Research Interests and Activities:

Since the late 1940s, Cornell has had a strong research program in radio wave and upper atmospheric physics, especially space plasma physics. We now use very powerful radars and sophisticated data-processing techniques to study the earth's atmosphere and ionosphere at altitudes ranging from a few kilometers to several thousand kilometers. Fluctuations in the refractive index of the atmosphere scatter back to the ground a small but detectable portion of a transmitted radar pulse, and with proper analysis of the signal one can determine many of the parameters of the scattering medium, such as the wind velocity, the passage of atmospheric gravity waves, turbulent transport rates, the electron density, the electron and ion temperatures, the ambient electric field, and the properties of unstable plasma waves. Some aspects of plasma physics are best studied in the "outdoor" laboratory that space provides. These radar studies have taken Cornell faculty, staff, and graduate students to locations such as Peru, northern Scandinavia, the Caribbean, Greenland and the South Pacific.

Farley, D.T., Theory of equatorial electrojet plasma waves: new developments and current status, J. Atmoos. Terr. Phys., 47, 729-744, 1985.

Farley, D.T., On-line data processing techniques for MST radars, Radio Science, 20, 1177-1184, 1985.

Kudeki, E., and D.T. Farley, Aspect sensitivity of equatorial electrojet irregularities and theoretical implications, J. Geophys. Res., 94, 426-434, 1989.

Farley, D.T., and J. Providakes, The variation with Te and Ti of the velocity of unstable ionospheric two-stream waves, J. Geophys. Res., 94, 15,415-15,420, 1989.

Sahr, J.D., D.T. Farley, and W.E. Swartz, Removal of aliasing in pulse-to-pulse Doppler radar measurements, Radio Sci., 24, 697-704, 1989.

Farley, D.T., J.D. Sahr, and J.F. Providakes, Ion cyclotron harmonics in auroral radar echoes: Real effect or ,analysis artifact?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 18, 709-712, 1991.

Sahr, J.D., D.T. Farley, W.E. Swartz, and J.F. Providakes, The altitude of type 3 auroral irregularities: Radar interferometer observations and implications, J. Geophys. Res., 96, 17805-17811, 1991.

Farley, D.T., Early incoherent scatter observations at Jicamarca, J. Atmos. Terr. Phys., 53, 665675, 1991.

Farley, D.T., W.E. Swartz, D.L. Hysell, and C. Ronchi, High resolution radar observations of daytime kilometer-scale wave structure in the equatorial electrojet, J. Geophys. Res., submitted, 1993.