Radio Science

Statistical analysis of the temporal and spatial variations in the ionosphere is necessary to improve the shortwave system. Based on the standardized Euclidean distance algorithm, multisource ionospheric assimilation data, International GNSS Service vertical total electron content data, and ionosonde data are used to statistically analyze the ionospheric correlation distance, and the variation of ionospheric correlation distances with local times, magnetic latitudes, and seasons are obtained. The statistical analysis results show that the zonal ionospheric correlation distance presents minima in the equatorial ionospheric anomaly crest regions. Additionally, the meridional correlation distance in middle magnetic latitudes is greater than that in other regions. The zonal ionospheric correlation distance presents obvious local-time variability. The variation trends of the meridional and zonal correlation distance during spring and autumn are similar. The patterns of the ionospheric correlation range variation with local times, magnetic latitudes, and seasons can be used to select the optimal locations or spacing for ionosonde stations, shortwave multi-station systems, and shortwave radio beacons.

The practical applications within the domain of the fifth generation (5G) and the emerging beyond 5G network necessitate a high data transmission rate along with minimal achievable delay. With this objective in focus, the maximum capacity is extensively quantified through the utilization of the delay-constrained effective capacity (EC) technique, which stands in contrast to Shannon's ergodic capacity. The current study is engaged in the analysis of EC within a delay-limited wireless system operating in a double-shadowed Rician (DSR) fading channel. Within this channel, only the Nakagami-m distribution concept has been applied to both the dominant and secondary shadowing components of the proposed network model. A new exact closed-form expression for EC within the DSR fading channel has been derived using the Fox-H function. Furthermore, an analysis has been conducted for both high and low signal-to-noise ratios to provide further insights and explanations for the proposed model. It is worth noting that the results obtained from both simulation and analytical methods exhibit substantial similarity, revealing interdependence among various parameters present in the proposed model.

This work studies variations of ionospheric total electron content (TEC) during four distinct solar eclipse events over the Ethiopia region. Dual-frequency global positioning system (GPS) data obtained from UNAVCO over Addis Ababa (9.036°N, 38.76°E) and Bahir Dar (11.6°N, 37.34°E) stations are used to examine the ionospheric variability during two annular solar eclipses on 15 January 2010 and 1 September 2016, a partial solar eclipse on 4 January 2011, and a hybrid solar eclipse (the eclipse path starts out as annular but later changes to total) on 3 November 2013. The results show a significant decrease in TEC values during the occurrence of the solar eclipses. Specifically, the TEC values are reduced to −20% and −10% during the annular eclipse on 15 January 2010, −33% and −38% during the partial solar eclipse on 4 January 2011, −26% and −24% during the annular solar eclipse on 1 September 2016, over the Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar stations, respectively. There is only minimal change in TEC of −8% and −9% at Addis Ababa and Bahir stations, respectively, during the 3 November 2013 solar eclipse even if the obstruction rate is high over the study area. Furthermore, the study shows that the spatial gradient of TEC reduction varies at different locations, which is attributed to the distinct amount of reduction in solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface, resulting in reduced photo-ionization. Overall, this study provides insightful information about the behavior of the ionospheric TEC during solar eclipses over Ethiopia and emphasizes the use of dual-frequency GPS data in tracking the variations of the TEC.

High latitude ionospheric density structures such as polar cap patches and arcs are capable of deflecting high frequency (HF) radio waves to off-great circle paths, and are likely detrimental to technologies dependent on HF radio propagation. In this study, nearly 2.5 years of 4.6–14.4 MHz data from a multi-frequency HF radio link between Qaanaaq, Greenland and Alert, Canada are used to investigate high-latitude off-great circle propagation in the polar cap. After an example of HF radio propagation affected by polar cap patches is shown in detail, a statistical analysis of the occurrence and impacts of off-great circle deflections in the polar cap is presented. Off-great circle propagation is shown to be increasingly common with increasing frequency up to 11.1 MHz, such that averaged over 1 year, received 11.1 MHz signals experienced deflections >30° from the great circle direction 65.6% of the time. The occurrence of these deflections across the year is shown to be at a maximum in the winter, while occurrence across the day varies with season. Trends across both time of day and time of year for 11.1 and 14.4 MHz deflections are consistent with polar cap patch occurrence trends. Off-great circle deflections are shown to be associated with increased time-of-flights, a larger range of positive and negative Doppler shifts, increased Doppler spreads, and lower signal-to-noise ratios. These results are discussed in the context of ionospheric phenomena in the polar cap, and implications for over-the-horizon radars operating at high latitudes.

Radio interferometers used to make astronomical observations, such as the LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR), experience distortions imposed upon the received signal due to the ionosphere as well as those from instrumental errors. Calibration using a well-characterized radio source can be used to mitigate these effects and produce more accurate images of astronomical sources, and the calibration process provides measurements of ionospheric conditions over a wide range of length scales. The basic ionospheric measurement this provides is differential Total Electron Content (TEC, the integral of electron density along the line of sight). Differential TEC measurements made using LOFAR have a precision of <1 mTECu and therefore enable investigation of ionospheric disturbances which may be undetectable to many other methods. We demonstrate an approach to identify ionospheric waves from these data using a wavelet transform and a simple plane wave model. The noise spectra are robustly characterized to provide uncertainty estimates for the fitted parameters. An example is shown in which this method identifies a wave with an amplitude an order of magnitude below those reported using Global Navigation Systems Satellite TEC measurements. Artificially generated data are used to test the accuracy of the method and establish the range of wavelengths which can be detected using this method with LOFAR data. This technique will enable the use of a large and mostly unexplored data set to study traveling ionospheric disturbances over Europe.

Radio telescopes with dual linearly polarized feeds regularly participate in Very Long Baseline Interferometry. One example is the VLBI Global Observing System (VGOS), which is employed for high-precision geodesy and astrometry. In order to achieve the maximum signal-to-noise ratio, the visibilities of all four polarization products are combined to Stokes I before fringe-fitting. Our aim is to improve cross-polarization bandpass calibration, which is an essential processing step in this context. Here we investigate the shapes of these station-specific quantities as a function of frequency and time. We observed the extra-galactic source 4C 39.25 for 6 hours with a VGOS network. We correlated the data with the DiFX software and analyzed the visibilities with PolConvert to determine the complex cross-bandpasses with high accuracy. Their frequency-dependent shape is to first order characterized by a group delay between the two orthogonal polarizations, in the order of several hundred picoseconds. We find that this group delay shows systematic variability in the range of a few picoseconds, but can remain stable within this range for several years, as evident from earlier sessions. On top of the linear phase-frequency relationship there are systematic deviations of several tens of degrees, which in addition are subject to smooth temporal evolution. The antenna cross-bandpasses are variable on time scales of ∼1 hr, which defines the frequency of necessary calibrator scans. The source 4C 39.25 is confirmed as an excellent cross-bandpass calibrator. Dedicated surveys are highly encouraged to search for more calibrators of similar quality.

No abstract is available for this article.

The complex refractive index and reflectance of an epidermis-equivalent phantom were evaluated in the terahertz-frequency region. The complex refractive indices of the epidermis and the epidermis-equivalent phantom, made using ultrapure water, mineral oil, glycerin fatty acid ester, and agar, were measured using a terahertz time-domain spectrometer. The complex refractive indices of the epidermis and the epidermis-equivalent phantom were in agreement. However, their mean reflectances had a difference of approximately 3%. The difference disappeared on adding surface roughness to the epidermis-equivalent phantom. Thus, we found that roughness of the surface of the epidermis-equivalent phantom was required to ensure a match of the reflectance of the phantom with that of the epidermis at frequencies from 0.2 THz to 0.6 THz.

In this paper we present details of the construction of a wideband, cryogenic receiver and its successful commissioning on the Arecibo Observatory 12 m telescope. The cryogenic receiver works in the 2.5–14 GHz frequency range. We upgraded the current narrow band, room temperature receivers of the telescope with the new wideband receiver. The current receiver is built around a Quadruple-Ridged Flared Horn (QRFH) developed by Akgiray et al. (2013, https://doi.org/10.1109/tap.2012.2229953). To mitigate strong radio frequency interference (RFI) below 2.7 GHz, we installed a highpass filter before the first stage low noise amplifier (LNA). The QRFH, highpass filter, noise coupler and LNA are located inside a cryostat and are cooled to 15 K. The measured receiver temperature is 25 K (median value) over 2.5–14 GHz. The system temperature measured at zenith is about 40 K near 3.1 and 8.6 GHz and the zenith antenna gains are 0.025 and 0.018 K/Jy at the two frequencies respectively. We recommend the following improvements to the telescope system: (a) Upgrade the highpass filter to achieve better RFI rejection near 2.5 GHz; (b) Improve aperture efficiency at 8.6 GHz; (c) Upgrade the intermediate frequency system to increase the upper frequency of operation from 12 to 14 GHz.

Several studies have examined ionospheric variation associated with meteorites, meteoroids, or meteors based on Global Satellite Navigation System total electron content observations. However, there have been few quantitative studies of the D-region of the ionosphere (60–90 km), which is associated with meteoroids. We investigated variation in the D-region during the passage of a meteoroid over northeastern Hokkaido, Japan, at 11:55:55 UT on 18 October 2018, using very low-frequency (VLF, 3–30 kHz) and low-frequency (LF, 30–300 kHz) signals observed by three transmitters [JJY (40 kHz), JJY (60 kHz), and JJI (22.2 kHz)], at Rikubetsu, Japan. Periodic variation of 100–200 s was observed in the VLF and LF amplitudes upon arrival of the acoustic wave. The vertical seismic velocity of Hi-net and F-net data also showed acoustic waves. Although the main period of the acoustic wave was 0.1–0.5 s in the seismic data, a longer period component (100–200 s) remained during propagation up to the D-region ionosphere. The estimated velocity of the acoustic waves was ∼340 m/s on the ground according to the Hi-net seismic data. The acoustic wave originated near the endpoint (25 km altitude) of the meteoroid trajectory. Based on the observed propagation time of the acoustic waves and ray tracing results, the acoustic waves propagated obliquely from near the endpoint of the meteoroid trajectory up to a D-region height (about ∼90 km altitude), south of the Rikubetsu receiver.

No abstract is available for this article.

Electromagnetic exposure caused by mobile communication signals has always been a cause of concern. Due to the cost and inconvenience of professional measurement equipment, researchers have turned to smartphone APPs to study and assess the electric field strength caused by mobile communication signals. However, existing cell phone-based measurements have two weaknesses. First, no system architecture suitable for large-scale crowdsourced testing has been proposed. Second, since smartphone sensors cannot measure electric field strength directly, existing methods for converting the received signal power of the phone and electric field strength have errors of more than 5 dB. This paper proposes a measurement and calibration method for electric field strength of mobile communication signals based on a smartphone app and gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT). This method consists of a downlink signal acquisition system based on an APP and a calibration model based on GBDT to convert received signal power into electric field strength. The experimental results show that the proposed model achieves a R 2 score of 0.93 and a MAE of 0.97 dB. Compared with the existing methods, our method improves the calibration accuracy by 4 dB, enabling large-scale, low-cost, and high-precision direct measurement of the electric field strength of mobile communication signals.

The amplitude of Very Low Frequency (VLF) transmissions propagating from transmitter to receiver between the Earth's surface and the ionospheric D-region is a useful measurement to detect changes in the ionization within the D-region ranging from 60 to 90 km. The VLF signal amplitude is disturbed by geomagnetic, solar, and atmospheric phenomena. To be able to identify perturbations in the VLF signal amplitude, we determine its averaged seasonal variation under quiet solar and geomagnetic conditions. Here it is challenging, that long time series of the VLF signal amplitude show significant jumps and outliers, which are caused artificially by technical adjustments/maintenance work. This paper presents a new approach for processing long VLF data time series over multiple years resulting in level 2 data. The new level 2 data enables the consideration of time series with artificial jumps since the jumps are leveled. Moreover, the outliers are removed by a robust and systematic 2-step outlier filtering. The average seasonal and diurnal variation for different transmitter-receiver combinations can be computed with the new level 2 data by applying a composite analysis. A subsequently applied polynomial fit obtains the quiet time lines for daytime and nighttime, representing the typical seasonal variation under undisturbed conditions of the VLF signal amplitude for each considered link. The developed quiet time lines may serve as a tool to determine perturbations of the VLF signal amplitude with solar and geomagnetic as well as atmospheric origin. Also, they allow comparison of the VLF signal amplitude variation for different transmitter-receiver links.

Electron density plays an important role in the study of wave propagation and is known to be associated with the index of refraction and radiation belt diffusion coefficients. The primary objective of our investigation is to explore the possibility of implementing an onboard signal processing algorithm to automatically obtain electron densities from the upper hybrid resonance traces of wave spectrograms for future missions. U-Net, developed for biomedical image segmentation, has been adapted as our deep learning architecture with results being compared with those extracted from a more traditional semi-automated method. As a product, electron densities and cyclotron frequencies for the entire DSX mission between 2019 and 2021 are acquired for further analysis and applications. Due to limited space measurements, a synthetic image generator based on data statistics and randomization is proposed as an initial step toward the development of a generative adversarial network in hopes of providing unlimited realistic data sources for advanced machine learning.

Ka-band Micro rain Doppler radar is an effective tool to investigate the profiles of precipitation microstructure in terms of the raindrop size distribution (DSD). The DSD parameters that vary appreciably with height are indicative of the associated atmospheric phenomena. Hence the present investigation endeavors to put light on the underlying physical processes responsible for the evolution of varied rain microstructure profiles using micro rain radar (MRR), and radiometric measurements complemented with re-analysis outputs over an urban tropical location, Kolkata (22.57°N, 88.37°E), India. MRR unravels the prevalence of significant biases in the typical power law relationship (D m  = aR b ) between rain rate (R) and mass-weighted mean drop diameter (D m ) along the rain height, especially during intense convective rain events, above the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). Consequently, an alternative empirical relation appropriate to account for the R-D m variability above the ABL is proposed. Further, radiometric measurements and re-analysis outputs reveal that the presence of atmospheric instabilities coupled with wind shear impacts above the ABL contributes to the enhanced breakup of raindrops and the deviations in the usual R-D m relationship. Thus, the present study intends to highlight the applicability of ground-based radar measurements over the tropics to devise quantitative precipitation algorithms for reliable rain estimates.

Nonmetallic minerals like granite and limestone have calcite and biotitic ingredients as their major part which exhibit wonderful absorption features in the visible and short wave range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This research puts emphasis on delineating granite and limestone deposits of the Mardan district through the latest multispectral Landsat-9 and Sentinel-2 sensors of which the latter provided 94% mapping accuracy in delineating granites (biotitic bearing minerals) and limestone (calcite-bearing minerals). The Image processing techniques of minimum noise fraction, which is double cascaded principal components analysis and pixel purity index algorithms proved helpful to bring significant improvements in classification results and in the reduction of noise and data size. The outcomes of the research study show that supervised machine learning algorithms are impactful to map such minerals provided that the data must be well organized and limited in size. The results achieved were verified through validation steps like, (a) Independent reference data of high-resolution Google Earth maps and (b) Ground survey reports. Arc GIS 10.2 and Envi 5.3 software suite were used to create (a) ground truth points at random for accuracy assessment (b) portraying study area maps (c) Image Processing and Preprocessing tools and (d) implementation of machine learning algorithms. Access to the data and software suite is being provided for open research work.

No abstract is available for this article.