The scintillation phenomenon at low elevation angles in earth-space communications

The scintillation phenomenon is a phenomenon which affects the amplitude and the phase of radio waves. In the scenario of an earth-satellite link, radio waves can encounter tropospheric turbulences in the atmosphere. These turbulences are the sources of amplitude and phase fluctuations which degrade the communications. It has been proved that this phenomenon becomes stronger at higher frequencies. Since radio communications tend to reach higher frequencies, this phenomenon becomes more and more studied and modelled. This work aims to test and find models which are going to reproduce the effect of the scintillation on radio waves. Therefore, we will derive analytical models under different hypotheses and see if they match real scintillation measurements. This will be done by implementing a software program in Matlab. Hence, we will be able to make an exhaustive comparison between our models and the measurements under different hypotheses and parameters. From this comparison, we will try to determine the best model and which hypothesis corresponds the most to the measurements.