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The returning radio waves can reflect off the Earth's surface into the sky again, allowing greater ranges to be achieved with multiple hops. This communication method is variable and unreliable, with reception over a given path depending on time of day or night, the seasons, weather, and the 11-year sunspot cycle .
The phase velocity for radio waves in the ionosphere is indeed greater than c, and that makes total internal reflection possible, and so the ionosphere can reflect radio waves. The geometric mean of the phase velocity and the group velocity cannot exceed c , so when the phase velocity goes above c , the group velocity must go below it.
Radio waves (black) reflecting off the ionosphere (red) during skywave propagation. Line altitude in this image is significantly exaggerated and not to scale. In radio communication, skywave or skip refers to the propagation of radio waves reflected or refracted back toward Earth from the ionosphere, an electrically charged layer of the upper atmosphere.
Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves as they travel, or are propagated, from one point to another in vacuum, or into various parts of the atmosphere. [1]: 26‑1 As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected by the phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering. [2]
VLF and ELF radio waves can also penetrate water to hundreds of meters deep, so they are used to communicate with submerged submarines. Skywaves: At medium wave and shortwave wavelengths, radio waves reflect off conductive layers of charged particles in a part of the atmosphere called the ionosphere. So radio waves directed at an angle into the ...
Skywave propagation, also referred to as skip, is any of the modes that rely on reflection and refraction of radio waves from the ionosphere. The ionosphere is a region of the atmosphere from about 60 to 500 km (37 to 311 mi) that contains layers of charged particles which can refract a radio wave back toward the Earth. A radio wave directed at ...
The ionosphere can be described as an area of the atmosphere in which radio waves on shortwave bands are refracted or reflected back to Earth. As a result of this reflection, which is often key in the long-distance propagation of radio waves, some of the shortwave signal strength is decreased.
The Earth–ionosphere waveguide [1] is the phenomenon in which certain radio waves can propagate in the space between the ground and the boundary of the ionosphere. Because the ionosphere contains charged particles, it can behave as a conductor. The earth operates as a ground plane, and the resulting cavity behaves as a large waveguide.