Propagation anomaly in the tropospheric atmosphere

Meteorological data has been processed to investigate RF propagation anomalies in tropospheric region from ground to 27 km in space. There are two major dominant factors in tropospheric radio frequency propagation-angular bending and time delay. The correction measures of these two tropospheric propagation problems have been proposed based on model-based or empirical measurements in terms of frequencies and climatic regions over the years to reduce propagation errors in telecommunication systems link analysis. This paper describes the performance of different climatological database and tropospheric models. A database has been developed to provide enough information for analyzing many different phenomena of the nonionized atmosphere in terms of refractivity, time delay, range error, and angle of arrival. A combined modified exponential model and the stratified range/angle error model, which is developed by tropospheric research team at NRL, is utilized. The proposed tropospheric model, a modified exponential model, outperforms in the accuracy improvement of range and time delay errors in the low elevation angle below 10 degree to negative degree while surface weather data and reference height are required only to run ray-tracing algorithms for range, time delay, and angle of arrival error. This readily accessible tropospheric model can be applied to topographic survey and the improved accuracy of remote sensing (such as imagery and mapping of resource by optical sensors) of land and ocean