Influences of Turbulent Reentry Plasma Sheath on Wave Scattering and Propagation

The randomness of turbulent reentry plasma sheaths can affect the propagation and scattering properties of electromagnetic waves. This paper developed algorithms to estimate the influences. With the algorithms and typical reentry data, influences of GPS frequency and Ka frequency are studied respectively. Results show that, in terms of wave scattering, the scattering loss caused by the randomness of the turbulent plasma sheath increases with the increase of the ensemble average electron density, ensemble average collision frequency, electron density fluctua?tion and turbulence integral scale respectively. Also the scattering loss is much smaller than the dielectric loss. The scattering loss of Ka frequency is much less than that of the GPS frequency. In terms of wave propagation, the randomness arouses the fluctuations of amplitude and phase of waves. The fluctuations change with altitudes that when the altitude is below 30 km, fluctuations increase with altitude increasing, and when the altitude is above 30 km, fluctuations decrease with altitude increasing. The fluctuations of GPS frequency are strong enough to affect the tracking, telemetry, and command at appropriate conditions, while the fluctuations of Ka frequency are much more feeble. This suggests that the Ka frequency suffers less influences of the randomness of a turbulent plasma sheath.