Understanding Ionospheric Bending in Radio Communication

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.

• 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.