Temporal broadening of pulsed waves propagating through turbulent media

Pulse signals, propagating through a turbulent medium such as the ionosphere, can be distorted by dispersion and scattering from both the background medium and irregularities embedded in. Thus, the mean square pulse width is changed, and temporal broadening is introduced. We carry out a study on the temporal broadening with theoretical analyses and numerical simulations by using an analytical solution of two-frequency mutual coherence function obtained recently by iteration. As a case of study, pulse broadening is investigated in detail in trans-ionospheric propagation. Results show that most contributions are mainly from the dispersion of the background ionosphere and scattering effects of electron density irregularities in most cases.