Single-Station Location of Radio Emission Sources in the Decameter Wavelength Range Using a Wide-Aperture Direction Finder and a Chirp Ionosonde–Radio Direction Finder

Abstract

We present the results of single-station location of radio emission sources on the mid-latitude Vasil’sursk—Rostov-on-Don path using a wide-aperture direction finder and a chirp ionosonde–radio direction finder. Methods for determining the arrival angles under conditions of multipath reception of radio signals are described. It is shown that when single- and double-hop propagation modes are separated by different direction-finding techniques, deviations of the arrival angles reach 5° in the azimuthal plane and up to 10◦ in the elevation plane, which is due to the traveling ionospheric disturbances. It is established that under conditions of a sporadic E_s layer, the chirptransmitter azimuth with averaging over frequency and sounding sessions can be determined to an accuracy of 0.1°. When regular 1F and 2F propagation modes are used to estimate the chirptransmitter azimuth, the average errors are 0.5° and 1°–2°, respectively. An algorithm for solving the inverse problem, by which the coordinates of the radio emission sources can be determined from the arrival angles using both the IRI-2012 ionospheric prediction model and correction of the data from the vertical sounding station at the reception point, have been developed. It is shown that the average error in determining the range to radio emission sources is 13%.