Determination of Ionospheric Current Systems by Measuring the Phase Shift on Amateur Satellite Frequencies

• Main Author: Kasturi, Prajwal M.
• Format: Others
• Published: DigitalCommons@USU 2013
• Subjects: Appleton Hartree; Field Alligned Currents; Ionosphere; Plasma Dispersion Relation; Electrical and Computer Engineering; Electromagnetics and photonics
• Online Access: http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/1521; http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2527&context=etd

We investigate the possibility of measuring and using the phase delay of radio frequency transmissions in the amateur satellite band as a method to determine the distribution of currents systems in the ionosphere. The amateur satellite transmissions at 7MHz, 14M Hz, and 144M Hz are low enough for Faraday rotation to cause a significant phase delay on the propagating signals in addition to the phase delay produced by the total electron content (TEC) in the ionosphere. The ionosphere in the E and F regions is modeled as an equivalent thin planar shell of collision free cold plasma 100 km in thickness located in an altitude range of 100 􀀀 200 km. The earth's magnetic field is superposed with a weaker magnetic field due to a narrow Gaussian strip of current representing an ionospheric electrojet. The prole of the current system is obtained by numerically optimizing the Appleton-Hartree dispersion relation for rays of simulated radio frequency (RF) signals that propagate through the ionosphere shell. The optimization procedure is performed with a differential evolution algorithm. From the optimization procedure, we obtain the ionosphere total electron content (TEC) and the strength, prole, and orientation of the ionospheric current system.