Fractal structure of artificial ionospheric turbulence

Abstract

We show the results of the first experimental studies of the multifractal structure of the developed artificial ionospheric turbulence. As a result of the special multifractal analysis of the recorded amplitudes of signals from the orbital satellites, which were obtained during the experiments on radio tomography of the irregularities excited in the ionosphere by the powerful mid-latitude heating facility "Sura," it is found that the characteristic multifractal structure of these records is caused by the nonuniform spatial distribution of the small-scale fluctuations of the electron number density in the artificial irregularities of the ionospheric plasma. Comparative analysis is performed for the multifractal spectra of fluctuations of both the amplitudes and energies of signals received from the orbital satellites upon radio transmission probing of the region of artificial ionospheric turbulence by these signals at three observation points located near the "Sura" heating facility and spaced apart to a distance of about 100-150 km.

Multipower spectrum of small-scale ionospheric turbulence

“…Figure 3 shows that the forms of a multipower transverse (to the Earth's magnetic field) component of the anisotropic spectrum of ionospheric turbulence during this experiment were significantly different for the paths of the ionospheric radio sounding at the above observation points. This result is in good agreement with the significant difference of the experimental multifractal spectra of fluctuations of the received-signal amplitude at different observation points [6].…”

“…(20) and (21), Fig. 3, and the reference spectra D A (α q ) from [6]. Figure 4 shows that the generalized multifractal spectra D N (p 2q ) of small-scale artificial ionospheric turbulence at two spaced-apart observation points are markedly different.…”

“…The values of α q are determined during the conventional multifractal processing of signals (see Eqs. (1) and (2) and [1,2,6]). …”

“…A layout of the corresponding experiment and preliminary results of the multifractal processing of amplitude records of the received satellite signals are given in[6].…”

Peculiarities of Excitation of Large-Scale Plasma Density Irregularities During Modification of the Ionospheric F 2 Region by High-Power HF Radio Waves

“…2b it can be concluded that TEC variations with an almost constant period of 2.5-3 min are observed inside the cavity, and their amplitude varies within the limits of ±0.3 TECU. The appearance of such ordered structures in the magnetic zenith region were mentioned before in [33]. Such a behavior of the TEC is typical of the evening and night hours of measurements, when the line of sight to the satellite is close to the magnetic zenith region.…”