Performance of Digital Signals Through Plasmas

The performance of digital signals may be significantly affected by the presence of plasmas in the propagation path. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of a plasma medium on pulsed waves and to assess the resultant degradation in communication performance. It is shown that pulse signals traveling through a dispersive medium are distorted both in time and space due to the frequency dependence of the medium\´s constitutive parameters. Distortion causes successive pulses to smear onto each other giving rise to intersymbol interference in the case of digital signals.