Effects of Ionospheric Radio Wave Scattering in the Decameter Interferometry

Abstract

We consider some theoretical issues concerning diffraction of radio waves in a randomly irregular ionosphere with application to the problems of long-wavelength interferometry of cosmic objects. The statistical characteristics of intensity fluctuations of the decameter radio emission from discrete sources in the case of ground-based observations by two-element interferometers with very long and small baselines are analyzed. Analytical expressions are obtained for the autocorrelation function of the radiation intensity and for the scintillation spectrum of a point source in the limiting cases of large and small phase increments in an irregular ionospheric plasma. We find that in the case of radio interferometric reception, the scintillation spectrum corresponding to observations of a source by a single antenna is transferred from the zero-frequency region to the region of the Doppler frequency of the interferometer. It is shown that decameter ground-based and space-borne radio interferometers can be used to study the angular distribution of the radio brightness of cosmic sources under conditions of both quiet and disturbed ionosphere.