AE22A-03
High-frequency Propagation through the Ionosphere from the Sura Heating Facility to the Orbiting CASSIOPE/e-POP Payload
Tuesday, 15 December 2015: 10:50
3001 (Moscone West)
H Gordon James, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, Vladimir Leontievich Frolov, Radiophysical Research Institute, Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia, Artem M Padokhin, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia and Carl L Siefring, US Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, United States
Abstract:
High-frequency pump waves have been transmitted from the Russian heating facility Sura to the Radio Receiver Instrument (RRI) in the e-POP payload on the Canadian small satellite CASSIOPE. This experiment has been carried out 24 times, under a variety of circumstances. In some cases, the ePOP VHF-UHF beacon CERTO was on, and ground receivers near Sura recorded total electron content. Subsequent tomographic processing has allowed the two-dimensional electron density distribution to be determined in the altitude-latitude space between Sura and CASSIOPE. We present some details from a night-time pass on 9 Sept. 2014 when the fixed pump frequency 4.3 MHz was slightly smaller than foF2 above Sura. This was an instance in which conversion between the O and Z cold plasma modes may have been required to achieve transmission. Explanation could be elaborated in terms of underdense, heater-created, field-aligned irregularities that are "artificial radio windows". The Sura heater radiation pattern maximum was tilted 12° south of the vertical, toward the terrestrial magnetic field axis, potentially enhancing the power transmitted through radio windows. The observations are interpreted in the light of competing concepts of transmission.
