The effects of artificial ionospheric heating on partial reflections

A description is given of several theories that make use of a radio wave partially reflected from the D-region of the earth's ionosphere. A new form of pulsed wave interaction experiment is proposed, which utilizes a probing wave that is partially reflected within a region heated by an independent ground based high power RF source. The interaction coefficient then is composed of two parts: one due to the perturbation of the absorption coefficient of the probe and another due to the perturbation of the partial reflection coefficient. The latter yields ionospheric information about the reflection region alone. The effects of self heating on the usual partial reflection experiment are examined. Results obtained here show that this effect can significantly change the results of this experiment. Actual data, which substantiate the predictions, are presented. An analytical electron density synthesis technique is presented for the partial reflection experiment. This reduction method is based on volume reflection theory and makes use of only ordinary mode data.