In 2001, the DEMETER micro-satellite will be launched to perform Detection of Electro-Magnetic Emissions Transmitted from Earthquake Regions. Its main scientific objective is related to the investigation of the ionospheric perturbations due to the seismic and volcanic activity. A system allowing an onboard identification and characterization of spatially and temporally coherent structures associated with the measurement of one or several electromagnetic wave field components is used. It is based on neural networks. The choice and training of the neural network are done on the ground from available waveforms. The parameters of the neural network system are then transmitted to the satellite. This reconfiguration process can be repeated whenever necessary during the space mission. Details about the functioning and coding optimization for DSP implementation is presented. The first function of this system which will be performed on the satellite DEMETER is the real-time identification and characterization of whistler phenomena. An application to the analysis of such phenomena observed in data from the AUREOL-3 satellite is exposed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the ray focussing of whistler-mode waves in the outer magnetosphere which results in an enhanced wave-particle interactions. The critical frequency in a homogeneous plasma is first studied, at which the refractive index surface of whistler-mode waves indicates a zero curvature at a longitudinal wave normal angle. This critical frequency is also found to be consistent with the zero diffraction coefficient in the full-wave theory for a slightly inhomogeneous plasma. The two-dimensional ray-tracing computations for varying the frequency and initial wave normal direction in an inhomogeneous realistic model of the outer magnetosphere, have yielded that although the critical frequency for the homogeneous case has its importance even in the inhomogeneous plasma, the strongest ray focussing seems to occur at a frequency slightly below the above critical frequency, and hence that an enhanced gyroresonance wave-particle interaction is anticipated at this frequency.

This paper deals with the radiation phenomenon from bent transmission lines numerically and experimentally. At first, the radiation loss for different types of bent transmission lines has been estimated by using the method of moments (MoM), in order to suggest the most optimal design for a bent line in terms of a radiation loss. So, the simplest line with a right-angle bend is recommended. Then, the radiation patterns from such a right-angle bent transmission line have been numerically calculated, which may indicate that the radiation is originated mainly at the bend, but other parts are also found to contribute to the overall pattern with many extra lobes. All of the numerical results were confirmed by the corresponding experiment.

The perfect matched layer (PML) is formulated for the use in the constrained interpolation profile (CIP) method. Numerical results are presented to examine the performance of the proposed formulation of the PML in the case of two-dimensional TM wave. The results show that the proposed methods suppress the reflection effectively in comparison with the natural absorbing boundary condition of the CIP method. We have two methods to formulate the PML, and it is shown that the both methods have equal characteristics.

The simultaneous measurement of five field components (three magnetic and two electric components) was carried out on board the ionospheric Aureol-3 satellite in a frequency range from 10 Hz to 1.5 kHz, and we have developed a systematic signal processing of direction finding for ionospheric and magnetospheric ELF emissions at eight selected frequencies mainly based on the likelihood concept. So, the purpose of this paper is to present the detailed description of those systematic direction finding measurements at frequencies above and below the proton gyrofrequency, but more emphasis is placed on the latter frequency range where two possible modes of propagation may coexist. This kind of systematic analyses will be of great use in the future wave analysis system on the spacecrafts.

In this communication we propose to solve the problem of reconstruction from limited data using a statistical regularization method based on a Bayesian information criterion. The minimization of the Bayesian information criterion, which is used here as an objective index to measure the goodness of an estimate, gives the optimum value of the smoothing parameter. By doing so, we could reduce the inversion problem to a simple minimization of a one-variable nonlinear function. The application of such a technique overcomes the nonuniqueness of the solution of the ill-posed problem and all shortcomings of many iterative methods. In the light of simulation and application to real data, we propose a slight modification to the Bayesian information criterion to reconstruct the wave energy distribution at the ionospheric base from the observation of radio wave electromagnetic field on the ground. The achieved results in both the inversion problem and the wave direction finding are very promising and may support other works so far suggested the use of Bayesian methods in the inversion of ill-posed problems to benefit from the valuable information brought by the a priori knowledge.

A total-field/scattered-field (TF/SF) boundary which is commonly used in the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to illuminate scatterers by plane waves, is developed for use in the constrained interpolation profile (CIP) method. By taking the numerical dispersion into account, the nearly perfect TF/SF boundary can be achieved, which allows us to calculate incident fields containing high frequency components without fictitious scattered fields. First of all, we formulate the TF/SF boundary in the CIP scheme. The numerical dispersion relation is then reviewed. Finally the numerical dispersion is implemented in the TF/SF boundary to estimate deformed incident fields. The performance of the nearly perfect TF/SF boundary is examined by measuring leaked fields in the SF region, and the proposed method drastically diminish the leakage compared with the simple TF/SF boundary.

This paper presents a theory based on combined differential- and common-mode propagation for crosstalk and transient analysis of pairs of asymmetric coupled interconnects with arbitrary time-invariant linear termination circuits. Time-domain solutions are obtained by an exact numerical inversion of Laplace transform (NILT). Two example circuits (coupled coplanar stripline and microstrip structures) are studied to examine the accuracy and efficiency of the present method.

In the present communication we propose the application of unsupervised Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to solve general ill-posed problems and particularly we apply them to the the estimation of the direction of arrival (DOA) of VLF/ELF radio waves. We use the wave distribution method which consists in the reconstruction of the energy distribution of magnetospheric VLF/ELF waves at the ionospheric base from observations of the wave's electromagnetic field on the ground. The present application is similar to a number of computerized tomography and image enhancement problems and the proposed algorithm can be straightforwardly extended to other applications in which observations are linearly related to unknowns. Then, we have proven the applicability and also we indicate the superiority of the ANN to the conventional methods to handle this kind of problems.

An analogue equipment is developed and described, which can automatically identify and track the magnetospheric whistler signal so that we can measure the amplitude ratio and phase difference between two horizontal magnetic field components of each whistler over a wide frequency range (6 to 3 kHz) and then we can study the ionospheric transmission characteristics of whistlers.

In this paper we consider the determination of direction of arrival of VLF/ELF radio waves and their energy distribution at the ionospheric base by means of the inversion of electromagnetic data observed on the ground. The observed data are too limited, leading us to deal with a severely ill-posed problem similar to those encountered in digital image enhancement and computerized tomography. To handle this situation, the a priori information if available, is supposed to bring as much weight as the observed data do. We used a regularization based on Bayesian information criterion to reconstruct the wave distribution function at the ionosphere, that is, to determine the wave arrival direction. Using computer-generated data, two main results were obtained: first, the electromagnetic field data observed on the ground are sufficient to give a good approximation to the exit region of VLF/ELF radio waves and to reconstruct the wave energy distribution nicely at the ionospheric base. Secondly, the Bayesian information criterion is shown efficient and very promising to handle the situations where the data number is too small compared to the number of unknowns which is the case of most reconstruction problems.

The mechanism of reflection of radio waves from the anisotropic lower ionosphere with exponential profile has been investigated over a wide frequency range from ELF (extremely low frequency) to LF (low frequency) by means of a full-wave method. The reflection levels deduced from the full-wave study have been compared with those which are analytically obtained from the concept of the modified refractive index for the isotropic ionosphere.

The wave distribution functions (WDFs) have been reconstructed by means of the maximum entropy inversion to the observed spectral matrix composed of the auto- and cross-power spectra among the three field components (Bx, By and Ez) in which the exactly right-handed circular polarization is taken in the integration kernels. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the properties of wave distribution functions reconstructed for wave sources whose central polarization is somewhat deviated from right-handed circular and to study (1) the WDF's by using the right-handed circular polarization in the kernels, (2) the effect of larger deviations for the polarization of elementary plane waves consituting the wave source, (3) the WDF's based on the elliptical polarization kernels and (4) the effect of limiting the number of eigenvalues. It is then found that changing the polarization model in the integration kernels would be helpful in finding out the polarization of the actually observed signals.