Numerical simulation of ionospheric propagation based on the TSNU-PSTD

The finite difference time domain (FDTD) method for solving ionospheric propagation will waste great time and memory. In this paper, a transformed-space non-uniform pseudo-spectral time domain (TSNU-PSTD) method in cold plasma is developed and applied to the simulation of ionospheric propagation. It is reported that this technique is as efficient as the conventional uniform pseudo-spectral time domain(PSTD) with a computational complexity of O(NIogN) since the difference is only the factor of du/dz between the conventional PSTD and the TSNU-PSTD techniques. And TSNU-PSTD can eliminate undesired Gibbs phenomena on the interface of each layer of ionosphere, which could seriously deteriorate the implementation of the PSTD.