Peculiarities of Modeling of Propagation of HF Radio Waves Along a Long Path When Recording Z Structures Caused by Traveling Ionospheric Disturbances on Oblique Sounding Ionograms

Abstract

We present the results of modeling of propagation of HF radio waves on the Cyprus—Nizhny Novgorod path during recording of traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) manifested on the distance–frequency characteristic as z-structures. The ray paths of waves propagating in a smoothly inhomogeneous magnetized ionospheric plasma were calculated for the conditions of experiments conducted in the summer of 2023. The model disturbance of the ionospheric electron density profile during the passage of a TID was specified as a periodic structure with a certain number of periods, which was simulated by a harmonic function exponentially limited in altitude. The model parameters were selected by the best match between the modeling results (calculated distance–frequency characteristics (DFCs)) and the experimentally recorded DFCs of oblique ionospheric sounding.