Research on the ionospheric ion velocity distribution and the incoherent scattering spectra of the radar with the 16-moments approximation for the relaxation collision model

Abstract

The distribution function which given by Grad cannot be used to describe the ionospheric ion velocity distribution due to the larger anisotropic temperature appears in the high-latitude ionosphere. In this article, based on the Boltzmann equation, the relaxation collision model (RCM) was used to substitute the Boltzmann collision integration, and a non-Maxwell ion velocity distribution function with the 16-moments approximation for the bi-Maxwell distribution was given, and the ion transport equation with the 16-moments approximation was also derived and solved. Moreover, the ion velocity distribution, the solution of transport equation and the incoherent scattering spectra with the 13-moments and 16-moments approximation for the relaxation collision model were simulated, analyzed and compared. The research shows that compared with the 13-moments approximation, the 16-moments approximation with the bi-Maxwell distribution is more suitable to describe the characteristics of the anisotropic temperature ion distribution in the high-latitude ionosphere.