Weighted spectral width of ionospherically dispersed chirp pulses

A generalised expression relating the width of a compressed chirp pulse to signal bandwidth, the slope of the group time delay, the sweep rate and the 6-dB bandwidth of the channel is presented. For most ionospheric conditions, the time-bandwidth product of the compressed signal is less than a hundred. Hence, a more accurate estimate of the width can be obtained from the computed spectrum. Numerical spectral widths for nine window functions are presented to demonstrate the effect of weighting on the measured width. Comparison with measured data shows good agreement with the simulations