IONORT: a Windows software tool to calculate the HF ray tracing in the ionosphere

Abstract

This paper describes an applicative software tool, named IONORT (IONOspheric Ray Tracing), for calculating a three-dimensional ray tracing of high frequency waves in the ionospheric medium. This tool runs under Windows operating systems and its friendly graphical user interface facilitates both the numerical data input/output and the two/three-dimensional visualization of the ray path. In order to calculate the coordinates of the ray and the three components of the wave vector along the path as dependent variables, the core of the program solves a system of six first order differential equations, the group path being the independent variable of integration. IONORT uses a three-dimensional electron density specification of the ionosphere, as well as geomagnetic field and neutral particles–electrons collision frequency models having validity in the area of interest.