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An Evaluation of the ITSA 3‐D Ray‐Trace Program
Author(s) -
Lemanski Theodore J.
Publication year - 1968
Publication title -
radio science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.371
H-Index - 84
eISSN - 1944-799X
pISSN - 0048-6604
DOI - 10.1002/rds19683195
Subject(s) - range (aeronautics) , trace (psycholinguistics) , physics , computational physics , mathematics , optics , geodesy , geology , materials science , philosophy , linguistics , composite material
A three‐dimensional ray‐trace program developed by ITSA, Boulder, Colorado is compared for range accuracy with theoretically calculated values of range. Ray tracings were made through two quasi‐parabolic ionospheres of different heights and thicknesses with no magnetic field or electronic collisions involved. For the case where the maximum allowable single step error was a minimum (corresponding to longer computer running time), the maximum range error encountered was 26.3 km at a zero‐degree launch angle. However, for launch angles equal to or greater than 0.5°, the typical range errors were less than 1.0 km.