During the 27th triennial URSI General Assembly in Maastricht it was decided by Commission G to form a new working group on ionospheric research to support radio systems (WG G.4). It is hoped that WG G.4 will provide a focus for research and collaboration that is specifically aimed at improving the performance of ionospheric radio systems. It will thus address item (e) of URSI Commission G terms of reference: Application of ionospheric information to radio systems. Performance enhancements may be due to either exploitation or mitigation of ionospheric effects. It is intended that the WG should consider a wide range of systems that may include:

• Communications - LF, MF and HF skywave radio, especially digitally modulated systems such as those embodied within the new Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) system. Also trans-ionospheric UHF satellite communications.
• Radars/surveillance - including HF over the horizon radar, space-based radar and ground based radar.
• Navigation - including GNSS, GPS etc and various augmentation systems.

• Ray tracing
• Scintillation measurement, modelling and forecasting
• Electron density imaging, modelling and forecasting
• Sensor integration for ionospheric specification
• Channel modelling and simulation

The overall roles of the WG will include:

• Sponsorship of meetings and sessions at the URSI General Assembly.

  Meetings

• Exchange of code and modelling techniques, reports, publications and general information

  Useful links

• Integration of space weather resources
• Better understanding of the engineering utility of our research

In order to guide the initial work of the WG it has been decided to focus on two topics of interest. It should be noted that it is not the intention to limit the WG to these topics, but rather that they can be used to generate initial interest in the group.

• The first topic is the development of internationally recognised data sets that can be used to test ionospheric data assimilation and imaging schemes. As different ionospheric imaging techniques are developed, it will become increasingly important to undertake studies to assess their performance against independent ionospheric data. The WG test data sets should include a defined set of data to be assimilated, as well as independent data against which the fidelity of the ionospheric reconstructions can be tested. All the data should be non-propriety, available to all, and in easy to manipulate formats. To open discussions on this topic, the WG Chair and Vice-Chair will propose such a data set and provide details on the WG website. It is hoped that it will have been possible to perform some comparative testing before the next URSI GA.

  Data Assimilation

• The second topic concerns the development of new HF prediction codes tailored for application to digital HF communications and broadcasting. Although this topic appears to be recognised as being of increasing importance as new digital HF standards emerge, little tangible progress has been made over the last few years. It is suggested that the WG should seek to produce a discussion document on such prediction codes, which will address possible technical approaches and the availability of data sets that may contribute to better models of delay and Doppler spread.

  Propagation Predictions for Digital Radio

More informaiton on wg4 can be obtained from the URSI COmmission G contacts, and the wg4 officers.

Contacts

The Working Group has a mail group.

The wg4 mail list is an administered list hosted on computers owned by IPS, and hence by the Australian Government.

To join the mail list, please send an email message to Phil Wilkinson  (phil@ips.gov.au). Once subscribed to the list, members will be able to unsubscribe / re-subscribe and alter their membership information using password information sent to them.

Notes and questions to the list can be submitted directly by addressing a message to wg4@ips.gov.au . All messages will be manually filtered, to remove spam, before being submitted to the List.