Dependence of plasma bubble altitude on solar flux and variations in the spectral characteristics of irregularities on apex altitude

We analyze data from the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory and launched into an elliptical low earth orbit at an inclination of 13o, a perigee of 400 km and an apogee of 850 km. With complementary ground-based instruments and on-board payloads, the primary goal of the mission was to forecast ionospheric irregularities and radio wave scintillations. While the altitude variation of the spacecraft complicates the statistical comparisons of parameters for purposes that require height-normalized values, it readily supports investigations of altitude variability, specifically electron density irregularities. The analysis presented here combines observations from the CNOFS PLP sensor and modeling results from the Physics-Based Model (PBMOD) to attempt to understand what controls the occurrence and altitude distribution of irregularities as well as their spectral characteristics and the associated effects on radio wave propagation.