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Ionospheric structure effects on HF radio wave propagation for the Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e‐POP) satellite mission
Author(s) -
Wang L.,
MacDougall J. W.,
James H. G.
Publication year - 2004
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 - 10.1029/2003rs002975
Subject(s) - ionosphere , ionosonde , outflow , high frequency , satellite , radio wave , geophysics , geology , doppler effect , ray tracing (physics) , physics , geodesy , remote sensing , plasma , meteorology , optics , electron density , astronomy , quantum mechanics
The Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e‐POP) payload will be launched on a small satellite in 2007 for exploring plasma and atmospheric outflow process in the polar region. The subject of this paper is whether one can determine the properties of large‐scale ionospheric structures by studying the perturbations that they cause on HF radio waves received at the e‐POP satellite from ground‐based transmitters such as the Canadian Advanced Digital Ionosonde (CADI). The perturbations on the received waves have been investigated using numerical ray‐tracing methods. These simulation results show that ionospheric irregular structures lead to a complex pattern of amplitude, propagation time delay, Doppler frequency, and direction‐of‐arrival (DOA) effects on the HF radio waves received at the satellite. The simulations also show that ionospheric density structure cannot be measured unambiguously using a single wave property. Therefore a “catalog” of HF signatures of typical ionospheric irregularities has been established in order to be able to interpret the e‐POP HF measurements in terms of ionospheric structures.