A possibility of increasing the
sensitivity of a radio occultation technique
A. L. Gavrik, Yu. A. Gavrik, T. F. Kopnina
Kotel'nikov Institute of
Radio-engineering and Electronics of RAS,
Fryazino
branch
Received May 5, 2011
Abstract. It is shown that new radio physical experiments in
which the on-board equipment of orbital spacecrafts receives coherent radio
waves transmitted from the ground-based station and measures the power and
phase of these waves are needed to increase the sensitivity of radio occultation
observations. These experiments will enable one to increase the capacity of the
radio link by a factor of about 10 compared with that of traditional experiments,
thus increasing the accuracy of the results and the space-time resolution of
radio occultation of the ionosphere and the atmosphere of a planet.
Keywords: occultation, radio wave propagation, ionosphere and
atmosphere of planets.