Design of an Ultrawideband Ionosonde

In this letter, an ultrawideband ionospheric sounding system was designed for ionospheric research and communication channel management. The frequency band of this ionosonde ranges from high frequency to very high frequency. It can be flexibly used at both monostatic and bistatic stations as a GPS receiver module was integrated. The system design includes three major components: control system, transmitting system, and receiver system. The operational parameters, such as frequency, waveform, and modulation type, can be manually reset. Correlation and Fourier algorithms are used to obtain a high signal-to-noise ratio and enlarge the detection range. The typical experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system can be used to study the ionosphere effectively.