Ionospheric Propagation of Plane Waves

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The propagation of plane waves in a stratified ionosphere is considered. It is shown that the construction of 'true' charac teristic waves depends upon the diagonalization of a matrix by a Loewy transformation. For a homogeneous ionosphere this construo tion can always be carried out explicitly. For the general case we obtain the wave solution in terms of characteristic waves which have the properties usually attributed to characteristic waves in magneto-ionic theory. In addition, the interaction between these waves is made clear by the introduction of continuous reflection and transition coefficients. Ordinary and extraordinary wave-re flection levels are shown to be points at which the elementary di Visors of a certain matrix become non-simple. Complicated expres Sions are obtained from which ionospheric reflection and transmis sion coefficients may be obtained explicitly.