An economic ionospheric sounding system using standard HF radio system elements

One of the most important sources of information about the current state of the ionosphere is generated by the processing of the outputs of ionosondes. This information can be used to update short-term propagation predictions of ionospheric conditions, as well producing outputs that can influence the choice of channel encoding scheme. The wide use of proprietary ionosondes to support HF communications is inhibited by the overall cost of the equipment due to its specialised nature. The use of digital signal processing (DSP) in conjunction with normal communications equipment can overcome this limitation, and provide a similar level of information about the state of the ionosphere