Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation

The ionosphere plays a major role in space weather and thereby influences the satellite based communication systems. For real time and near real time forecasting of ionospheric events, accurate and automatic scaling of ionogram parameters becomes very crucial. Here, in this paper a program for identification of the F2 layer trace and autoscaling the critical frequency (foF2) of F2 layer is presented and its performance is discussed.

A new super-long-range wave propagation technique was implemented at different High Frequency (HF) heating facilities. The HF waves radiated by a powerful heater were scattered into the ionospheric waveguide by the stimulated field aligned striations. This waveguide was formed in a valley region between the E-and F-layers of the ionosphere. The wave trapping and channeling provide super-long-range propagation of HF heater signals detected at the Ukrainian Antarctic Academik Vernadsky Station (UAS) which is many thousand kilometers away from the corresponding HF heating facility. This paper aims to study the excitation of the ionospheric waveguide due to the scattering of the HF heating wave by artificial field aligned irregularities. In addition, the probing of stimulated ionospheric irregularities can be obtained from analyses of the signals received at far distance from the HF heater. The paper uses a novel method of scattering of the HF radiation by the heating facility for diagnostics of non-linear effects at the super-long radio paths. Experiments were conducted at three different powerful HF facilities: EISCAT (Norway), HAARP (Alaska), and Arecibo (Puerto Rico) and by using different far spaced receiving sites. The key problems for super-long-range propagation regime is the feeding of ionospheric waveguide. Then the energy needs to exit from the waveguide at a specific location to be detected by the surface-based receiver. During our studies the waveguide feeding was provided by the scattering of HF waves by the artificial ionospheric turbulence (AIT) above the HF heater. An interesting opportunity for the channeling of the HF signals occurs due to the aspect scattering of radio waves by field aligned irregularities (FAI), when the scattering vector is parallel to the Earth surface. Such FAIs geometry takes place over the Arecibo facility. Here FAI are oriented along the geomagnetic field line inclined by 43 degrees. Since the Arecibo HF beam is vertical, the aspect scattered waves will be oriented almost horizontally toward the South. Such geometry provides unique opportunity to channel the radio wave energy into the ionospheric waveguide and excites the whispering gallery modes.

Researchers have always been in favor of path loss calculation in different media for applications such as telecommunication link design. Wave propagation calculations in large spaces using the FDTD method is time-consuming and imposes a great computational burden. For this reason, to replace the classical FDTD method for wave propagation simulation and path loss calculation in large spaces, optimized methods, namely TDWP, have been provided. In this paper, the use of the TDWP method for wave propagation simulation and path loss calculation above a terrain is investigated. Longitudinal components of ground-waves are taken into account (including direct waves, ground reflections, and surface waves). Propagation space is longitudinally divided into smaller FDTD windows with finite length. The electromagnetic pulse travels through these windows from left to right to the desired point. But despite its capability in reducing computational burden and increasing processing speed, TDWP has lower precision in instantaneous field simulation and calculation of propagation coefficients, so that results obtained from FDTD and TDWP are clearly different. In this paper, some efficient methods are proposed, which yield an increase in method accuracy.

The development of regional ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) model towards global model provide insight as to understanding the behavior of ionospheric parameters and its coupling to space weather activities on a global scale. In the past decades, the International Global Navigation Satellite Systems Service networks of dual frequency receivers’ data has be applied in a technique to develop global and regional models of ionospheric TEC. These models were mainly developed in Northern Hemisphere were there was dense network of ground based GPS receivers for regional data coverage. Such efforts were very rare over the African region, and have recently begun. However, this paper reports how the MAGIC package was used a research tool to investigate the effect of mid - latitude magnetic storms on TEC over South Africa for Solar Cycles 23 and 24. Results and observations of TEC patterns during Post Solar Minimum and Maximum periods as estimated by the MAGIC package over Southern Africa using the local GNSS network are presented and plans for future work.