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Understanding Ionospheric Bending in Radio Communication

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What is Ionospheric Bending?

This page describes ionospheric bending basics. The ionosphere is a region just above our atmosphere where there are a significant number of free electrons and ions. The number of ions and electrons are equal, hence there is no net charge.

Ionospheric Bending

  • When a RF (Radio Frequency) signal travels into the ionospheric layer, it experiences refraction due to differences in the density between layers.
  • The radio wave experiences a force from ions in the ionospheric layer.
  • If the RF signal is incident at the correct angle at this layer, it gets reflected back to our inner atmosphere due to total internal reflection.
  • This phenomenon is utilized in mobile communication for radio frequency propagation.
  • This ionospheric reflection is called ionospheric bending.