The monograph is devoted to a new branch of remote sounding of the iono sphere - ionospheric tomography. Adoption of tomographic methods seems to be an inevitable stage of the evolution of almost all diagnostic systems. Ad vanced techniques for remote sensing and progressive means for data process ing open the possibility of reconstructing the spatial structure of the medium on the base of tomography. In this book, mainly the problems of satellite radio tomography of the ionosphere are discussed, and only one subsection is alloted to optical ionospheric tomography. Modern radio sounding techniques make it possible by means of satellite facilities to probe the ionosphere within a wide range of varying positions of transmitting-receiving systems and to apply tomographic methods. In this connection, in recent years, active tomo graphic investigations of the ionosphere have been done. The purpose of this monograph is to set forth the tomographic methods developed for recovering the 2-D and 3-D structure of the ionosphere and to discuss experimental implementation of these methods. The topic of discus sion is reconstruction of electron density distribution and effective collision frequency. The structure of the ionosphere is known to be quite complex; along with a quasi-stratified background with large scale variations in elec tron density, there are also local irregularities of various scale sizes, including turbulent volumes.

Among leading researchers worldwide First monograph on the subject Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Klappentext

The purpose of this monograph is both to introduce and review developed tomograhic methods for discovering 2D and 3D structures of the ionosphere and to discuss the experimental implementation of these methods. The theoretical part deals with the solution of the inverse problem of diffraction tomography for a wide range of properties of ionospheric media. Examples are given to illustrate the experimental reconstruction of electron-density distributions in ionospheric sections. In addition to addressing the specialist researcher, the detailed derivations and explanations make this book an excellent starting point for nonspecialists and graduate students who wish to enter this exciting new field to which the authors have made pioneering contributions.

Inhalt

1. Ionosphere: Structure and Basic Methods for Radio Sounding and Monitoring.- 2. Ray Radio Tomography.- 3. Inverse Scattering Problems.- 4. Diffraction Radio Tomography of Ionospheric Irregularities.- 5. Statistical Radio Tomography of a Randomly Inhomogeneous Ionosphere.- 6. Further Development of Tomographic Methods.- Summary.- References.