Impact of the evaporation duct uncertainty on the tropospheric radio wave propagation

Abstract

This study is dedicated to the radio wave propagation modeling in the evaporation duct. Special attention is given to the fact that the parameters of tropospheric waveguides are practically always determined with some degree of error. An algorithm based on the parabolic equation method has been developed, which takes into account the measurement error of the tropospheric refractive index and assesses the statistical characteristics of the spatial distribution of radio wave amplitude. A series of numerical experiments have been conducted for various propagation conditions. It has been demonstrated that in many cases, ignoring the refractive index error can lead to significant discrepancies in simulation results.