The universal digital ionosonde

The digital ionospheric sounding system Digisonde 128PS explores ionospheric structure and dynamics by exploiting all observables of the reflected electromagnetic wave: range, amplitude, phase, Doppler, incidence angle, and wave polarization. The Digisonde operates in two complementary modes of observation: the Ionogram Mode with full range and frequency display but limited resolution in Doppler and incidence angle, and the Doppler‐Drift Mode operating with a limited number of frequency‐range bins but full resolution in Doppler and incidence angle. This technique reduces the volume of magnetically recorded output data to a manageable size. Special digital‐analog hybrid techniques are used for the presentation of the multi‐parameter ionograms and the sky maps.