A Review of Ionospheric Effects on Earth-Space Propagation
Abstract
Radio waves undergo several effects when they pass through the earth's ionosphere. One of the most important of these effects is a retardation, or group delay, on the modulation or information carried on the radio wave that is due to its encounter with the free, thermal electrons in the earth's ionosphere. Other effects the ionosphere has on radio waves include: (1) RF carrier phase advance; (2) Doppler shift of the RF carrier of the radio wave; (3) Faraday rotation of the plane of polariation of linearly polarized waves; (4) angular refraction or bending of the radio wave path as it travels through the ionosphere; and (6) amplitude and phase scintillations. With the exception of scintillation, all the other effects listed here are proportional, at least to first order, to the total number of electrons encountered by the wave on its passage through the ionosphere or to their time rate of change. In fact, phase scintillation also is merely the short term rate of change of total electron content (TEC) after the longer term variations have been removed. In this review, a short description will be given of each ionospheric TEC effect upon radio waves, along with a representative value of the magnitude of each of these effects under normal ionospheric conditions. This will be followed by a discussion of the important characteristics of average ionospheric TEC behavior and the temporal and spatial variability of TEC.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 01, 1984
- Accession Number
- ADA498048
Entities
People
- John A. Klobuchar
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory