Reflection of Electromagnetic Pulses From a Perturbed Linear Ionosphere Model

The reflection of a horizontally polarized, impulsive plane wave by a weakly perturbed ionosphere model is considered. A linear electron density profile and a constant collision frequency are assumed for the unperturbed model, and magnetic field effects are neglected. The transient response is formulated as an inverse Fourier transform of the first‐order frequency domain solution. For the special case of a thin‐layer irregularity, a numerical inverse transform is used to obtain responses that satisfy causality. It is shown that the presence of the thin‐layer irregularity is to modify the waveform of the reflected transient.