An Updating of the IONORT Tool to Perform a High-Frequency Ionospheric Ray Tracing

Abstract

This paper describes the main updates characterizing the new version of IONORT (IONOsperic Ray Tracing), a software tool developed at Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia to determine both the path of a high frequency (HF) radio wave propagating in the ionospheric medium, and the group time delay of the wave itself along the path. One of the main changes concerns the replacement of a regional three-dimensional electron density matrix, which was previously taken as input to represent the ionosphere, with a global one. Therefore, it is now possible to carry out different ray tracings from whatever point of the Earth’s surface, simply by selecting suitable loop cycles thanks to the new ray tracing graphical user interface (GUI). At the same time, thanks to a homing GUI, it is also possible to generate synthetic oblique ionograms for whatever radio link chosen by the user. Both ray tracing and homing GUIs will be described in detail providing at the same time some practical examples of their use for different regions. IONORT software finds practical application in the planning of HF radio links, exploiting the sky wave, through an accurate and thorough knowledge of the ionospheric medium. HF radio waves users, including broadcasting and civil aviation, would benefit from the use of the IONORT software (version 2023.10).