Physical phenomena in ionospheric and trans-ionospheric radio-communication

Ionospheric and plasmaspheric phenomena as the mid-latitude ionospheric trough and cusp highly disturb the radio-communication conditions, particularly during increased space weather activity level. Some widely available present programs for radio-communication prediction assessments do not consider these phenomena at all or in a manner that is far from satisfactory. The forecast algorithms however produce quite good results, their availability for radio-communication purposes is still not satisfied. This paper shows one of the possible solutions when updating, by means of additional screen points of the long-term prediction, instantaneous and forecast maps of ionospheric characteristics and total electron content is used. The screen points are constructed from the observations and from the models.