Development of a Geostationary Beacon System for Tec Measurement and Simulation of Orthogonal Coded Spread Spectrum System

Communications have come to rely heavily on ionospheric radio in spite of the sometimes unpredictable behavior of the ionosphere as a transmission medium. Far from being the static reflector of radio waves that the communicator would desire, the ionosphere continuously and sometimes suddenly, undergoes structural changes on almost all scales of size and time. Such changes upset the often delicate balance of operational parameters which must work together to optimize communications. This can be attributed to fading, low signal strength or even loss of signal. The properties of the ionosphere which govern these changes have been the object of research since the earliest days of radio.