Solar wind refers to a stream of charged particles called plasma that is ejected from the Sun and mostly consists of protons and electrons. These particles fly out toward the Earth’s atmosphere in the event of solar flares, and often affect electronic devices in satellites or cause communication problems by disturbing the geomagnetic field after colliding with particles in the Earth’s ionosphere. Interplanetary scintillation is the only ground instrument that is capable of monitoring the direction of solar wind.

The interplanetary scintillation instrument installed in KSWC measures fluctuations in speed and density of solar wind particles by observing the scintillation phenomena, which can be seen when a radio source in space passes solar wind particles. It is composed of a total of 768 antennas in 32 tiles - each tile has 24 antennas- in a phased array. Contrary to existing antennas which use motor tracking systems, the interplanetary scintillation instrument traces its object through a beam phase control system, which facilitates quick and accurate tracing of the object.