Application of artificial intelligence to ionospheric radio propagation

Expert systems which are a subset of artificial intelligence manipulate knowledge and reasoning procedures of human experts in solving problems efficiently and effectively in a narrow problem area. This paper proposes the application of expert systems to automate the prediction and forecasting of high frequency radio propagation. This is a new approach in prediction besides using artificial neural networks to forecast ionospheric critical frequency. The use of computer-based expert systems tools to forecast the propagation is very attractive, as the procedure in the conventional method is tedious. Furthermore, the quality of the information is not sacrificed. The expertise coded in the expert systems can be easily maintained to adapt with any irregularities. Further research is required to determine whether this method is significant during a sudden ionospheric disturbance, scintillation and magnetic storms, which produce signal fluctuations, fading and noise.