THE EFFECT OF IONOSPHERIC TILT ON RADIO DIRECTION FINDING POSITION ESTIMATES

It is generally accepted that the ionosphere tilts; that is to say, an isoionic layer is not at constant height above the surface of the earth. Ionospheric tilt has the effect of deflecting a radio ray out of its great-circle plane and returning it to earth at an angle not that of the true bearing from a receiver to a transmitter. The magnitude of error introduced by this effect on radio direction finding (RDF) position estimates was studied. A model assigning a tilt bias of less than three degrees to each RDF station bearing was constructed. Analysis of a six-station RDF network revealed that this amount of tilt has negligible effect on point estimates of location and their confidence regions.

• Corporate Authors:

  Naval Postgraduate School

  1 University Circle
  Monterey, CA  United States  93943
• Authors:
  • Lunde, R K
• Publication Date: 1972-3

Media Info

• Pagination: 59 p.

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Error analysis; Position fixing; Radio direction finders; Radio navigation
• Uncontrolled Terms: Direction finding
• Old TRIS Terms: Position finding
• Subject Areas: Marine Transportation; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00035671
• Record Type: Publication
• Source Agency: National Technical Information Service
• Report/Paper Numbers: MA Thesis
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Oct 27 1972 12:00AM