A Model of HF Impulsive Atmospheric Noise

Determination of optimal receiver or detector and suboptimal estimator in the presence of additive atmospheric noise depends on the application of a mathematically tractable model of noise. In the tropics the atmospheric radio noise occurring mostly in the burst form above a relatively small continuous background does not deliver energy at a constant rate. This type of noise is non-Gaussian and has a very large dynamic range. The noise bursts consist of a number of short impulses. They are modelled here as the product of a narrow-band Gaussian noise and the reciprocal of a non-Gaussian random process. This paper includes the derivation of statistical information for the above noise viz, the probability distribution of amplitudes, and of separation between pulses, required for determining the error probabilities using various digital methods. This information can be used in filter optimization in digital systems, where the error probability is to be minimized.