Use of the Longley-Rice and Johnson-Gierhart tropospheric radio propagation programs - 0.02-20 GHz

An evaluation is presented for the applications of the Longley-Rice (1967) and Johnson-Gierhart (1973) tropospheric radio propagation programs, which are useful in predicting propagation losses over irregular terrain in tactical warfare scenarios on the basis of an empirical data base which statistically weights knife-edge diffraction losses with losses from multipath interference, smooth-spherical earth diffraction, and troposcatter modes of propagation. Emphasis is given to the factors that must initially be considered in selecting and specifying input parameters. Numerical results are obtained for various tactical scenarios and input parameter ranges.