Polarization of electromagnetic waves for vertical propagation in the ionosphere

Abstract

A theoretical study of the variation of the state of polarization of a vertically incident electromagnetic wave while in propagation in the ionosphere has been made on the basis of an approximate solution of the wave equations obtained by Saha, Banerjee, and Guha. It has been shown that the major axes of the polarization ellipses of both the ordinary and the extraordinary waves would lie in the N–E quadrant in the northern hemisphere and in the N–W quadrant in the southern hemisphere. A new method has been outlined for the determination of the electron density and the collision frequency in the ionized layers from the value of the tilt-angle and the ratio of axes of the elliptic patterns. An analysis of the characteristics of the experimentally observed polarization patterns indicates that in E layer the value of v is 1.7×106 per second. They further show that the polarization of the downcoming waves corresponds to their respective reflection levels, rather than a limiting region below the E layer.