Determination of the statistical characteristics of the envelope of nonstationary radio signals from experimental data

The paper suggests that the distribution of the quotient of independent envelope readings be used to study nonstationary multiplicative processes which are represented as the product of a stationary ergodic process and a slow unknown time function. The quotient method is applied to the case when the stationary part of the initial process is governed by the Rayleigh-Rice law. The method can be applied to the study of ionospheric propagation, long-range radio communication, scattering from the earth surface, etc.