Modeling of ionospheric scintillation with a full kinetic simulation

Abstract

Ionospheric scintillation presents a significant challenge to the reliability of radio-based communication and navigation systems by causing fluctuations in the amplitude and phase of signals. These fluctuations are caused by irregularities in plasma density within the Earth’s ionosphere, which spans altitudes from 50 to 1000 kilometers and plays a crucial role in the propagation of radio waves. The ionosphere, ionized by solar radiation, acts as a dynamic plasma lens, altering the refractive index for electromagnetic (EM) waves.

This thesis investigates the impact of plasma density variations on wave propagation, drawing parallels to the behavior of Gaussian lenses. Two simulation models are employed: the full kinetic model and the material EM model. In the full kinetic model, all charged particles are explicitly represented as particles. In contrast, the computationally less expensive material EM model does not simulate individual particles; instead, it incorporates the effects of charged particles through electric conductivity.

The simulations were initiated using the full kinetic model. The effects of domain size, wave amplitude, and wave sources, with both point and plane waves, were investigated. Initial simulations used a uniform plasma, followed by ones with a plasma density-enhanced bubble. Later, a plasma bubble with reduced density was introduced to observe its effects, and comparisons were made between these two cases. Finally, the material EM model was applied to the same simulation configurations, and the results were compared with those from the full kinetic model. This showed that both models produced relatively similar results in the analyzed cases. In the final part of the study, the results from the two approaches were qualitatively compared with those obtained from a ray tracing simulation. The work suggests that both of the developed simulations, the full kinetic and material EM, provide useful tools to investigate ionospheric scintillation in detail.