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The so-called ionosonde drift technique of determining ionospheric velocities from angle of arrival and Doppler shift measurements is now well established. In the standard digital ionosonde technique, commonly called the drift mode, the velocity of the F region is usually determined without detail o...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Text |
| Language: | English |
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| Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.550.5612 http://www.ips.gov.au/IPSHosted/STSP/meetings/aip/peter/drift.pdf |
| Summary: | The so-called ionosonde drift technique of determining ionospheric velocities from angle of arrival and Doppler shift measurements is now well established. In the standard digital ionosonde technique, commonly called the drift mode, the velocity of the F region is usually determined without detail of its height variation. In this paper, we report the measurement of the height variation of the velocity profile through the E and F regions at Casey, Antarctica. In the standard analysis, velocities are interpreted as if they arose from mirror reflectors in free space. According to Dyson (1975), this gives valid results when the ionosphere moves with a constant bulk velocity. However, the velocity may vary through the ionosphere and the purpose of this paper is to discuss the affect of such variations on the derivation of the drift velocity. A simplified inversion routine is developed enabling average drift velocity profiles to be corrected for the velocity variation with height. The procedure has been applied to an average daytime velocity height profile obtained at Casey during a four day campaign in March 1996. The drift velocity component perpendicular to the magnetic field direction was found to increase rapidly through the bottom of the E region from a value of 170 m/s at 95 km |
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