Ionospheric electron density profile estimation using commercial AM broadcast signals

A new method for estimating the bottom electron density profile by using commercial AM broadcast signals as non-cooperative signals is presented in this paper. Without requiring any dedicated transmitters, the required input data are the measured elevation angles of signals transmitted from the known locations of broadcast stations. The input data are inverted for the QPS model parameters depicting the electron density profile of the signal's reflection area by using a probabilistic inversion technique. This method has been validated on synthesized data and used with the real data provided by an HF direction-finding system situated near the city of Wuhan. The estimated parameters obtained by the proposed method have been compared with vertical ionosonde data and have been used to locate the Shijiazhuang broadcast station. The simulation and experimental results indicate that the proposed ionospheric sounding method is feasible for obtaining useful electron density profiles.