Abstract
High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR), which is currently applied in over-the-horizon detection of targets and sea states remote sensing, can receive a huge mass of ionospheric echoes, making it possible for the ionospheric clutter suppression to become a hot spot in research area. In this paper, from another perspective, we take the ionospheric echoes as the signal source rather than clutters, which provides the possibility of extracting information regarding the ionosphere region and explores a new application field for HFSWR. Primarily, pretreatment of threshold segmentation as well as connected region generation is used in the Range-Doppler (R-D) Spectrum to extract the ionospheric echoes. Then, electron density and plasma frequency of field aligned irregularities (FAIs) caused by plasma instabilities in the F region are obtained by the coherent backscattered radar equation. The plasma drift velocity of FAIs can also be estimated from Doppler shift. Ultimately, the effectiveness of inversion is verified by comparing with IRI2012.
Highlights
High Frequency Surface Wave Radar (HFSWR), taking advantage of the sea-surface diffraction character of vertical polarized wave, has won great success in over-the-horizon sea target detection [1] and sea states remote sensing [2]
This paper tries to explain the physical mechanism between the HFSWR wave and ionosphere while estimating the electron density, plasma frequency, and drift velocity of irregularities created by plasma instabilities in the corresponding ionosphere region by the coherent backscattered radar equation
It is convincing that the ionospheric echoes of HFSWR mainly occur from coherent scattering between electromagnetic wave and irregularities caused by plasma instabilities
Summary
HFSWR, taking advantage of the sea-surface diffraction character of vertical polarized wave, has won great success in over-the-horizon sea target detection [1] and sea states remote sensing [2]. We take the ionosphere clutter as signal source to obtain relative parameters. Virtual heights, polarization, and Doppler shift can be obtained according to the ionogram of 1–30 MHz scanning-frequency results. In [13], the authors obtained the time-varying ranges, virtual heights, and horizontal drifting speeds of ionosphere irregularities by using the method of time-frequency distribution and continuous hours of long time observations. This paper tries to explain the physical mechanism between the HFSWR wave and ionosphere while estimating the electron density, plasma frequency, and drift velocity of irregularities created by plasma instabilities in the corresponding ionosphere region by the coherent backscattered radar equation.
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