Development of a Method for Determining the Position of Artificial Ionospheric Irreguliarities Responsible for the Radio-Wave Aspect-Angle Scattering on Short Paths by Oblique Backscatter Sounding Ionograms

Abstract

The data of experiments on the oblique backscatter sounding of the heated ionospheric volume above the Sura facility on a short Kazan—Vasilsursk—Kazan path, when the Cyclone-GPS ionosonde was operated in the ionogram recording regime in the frequency range 1–7 MHz with a step of about 20 kHz are compared with the results of ray-tracing calculations for the sounding and scattered signals of the O- and X-mode polarizations over the entire range of operating frequencies of the ionosonde. The dependences of the typical transverse (to the geomagnetic field) scales of artificial scattering irregularities (in the range 40–200 m), which are responsible for the aspec-tangle scattering of radio waves of this range, and the position of the scattering region on the frequency of the sounding signals are determined for the entire range of existence of oblique backscatter sounding ionograms.