Radio wave scintillations in the ionosphere.

A review is provided of the current status of the ionosphere scintillation of radio waves, taking into account both observational and theoretical points of view. Particular attention is given to aspects of transionospheric radio wave propagation and signal statistics. The characterization of ionospheric irregularities is discussed. The observational evidence is considered along with correlation functions and spectra, the optical path and the correlation of the total electron content, the optical path structure function, and frozen fields and their generalizations. Scintillation theories are examined, taking into account a statement of the problem, the phase screen theory, a theory for weak scintillation, the parabolic equation method, the probability distributions of the scintillating signals, and polarization scintillation. A description is provided of experimental results, and aspects of temporal behavior are investigated.