FDTD Analysis of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in an Inhomogeneous Ionosphere under Arbitrary-Direction Geomagnetic Field

The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) model was developed to analyze electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation in an inhomogeneous ionosphere. The EM analysis of ionosphere is complicated, owing to various propagation environments that are significantly influenced by plasma frequency, cyclotron frequency, and collision frequency. Based on the simple auxiliary differential equation (ADE) technique, we present an accurate FDTD algorithm suitable for the EM analysis of complex phenomena in the ionosphere under arbitrary-direction geomagnetic field. Numerical examples are used to validate our FDTD model in terms of the reflection coefficient of a single magnetized plasma slab. Based on the FDTD formulation developed here, we investigate EM wave propagation characteristics in the ionosphere using realistic ionospheric data for South Korea.