On the Mutual Coherence Function and Mean Arrival Time of Radio Propagation Through the Turbulent Ionosphere

On the basis of a solution to the mutual coherence function (MCF) obtained recently, this paper investigates the characteristics of pulse propagation through the turbulent ionosphere in arbitrary scattering regimes. First, the MCF is numerically discussed using different spectra of irregularities with different frequencies, bandwidths, and fluctuation regimes. Second, the mean arrival time of a pulse through the turbulent ionosphere is investigated. The dominant term is the travel time at the group velocity. Other effects are mainly from the higher order dispersion of background and scattering of irregularities, while the dispersion of irregularities is relatively small and can be neglected. It is found that effects from the scattering and dispersion of irregularities to the excess time delay decrease with increasing of the spectral index, the outer and inner scale, while increase quickly with fluctuations.