Prediction of the HF Ionospheric Channel Stability Based on the Modified ITS Model

Since the narrowband ionospheric channel model is applicable only to a limited set of actual conditions, in 1997 the Institute for Telecommunication Science (ITS) (Vogler and Hoffmeyer) developed a wideband HF ionospheric model, the so-called ITS model. However, the widely used ITS model has some restrictions in application: 1) the parameters are complex and difficult to obtain; 2) only the undisturbed situation is considered; and 3) the multipath delay is fixed and cannot represent the stochastic behavior of the ionosphere. In this paper, the ITS model is modified by introducing the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) and adding a parameter amending module to provide more accurate parameters, and based on the ITS mathematical and modeling structures, a wideband HF random time-varying ionosphere channel model is presented. With this model, the characteristics of the ionospheric channel under different conditions have been analyzed, and the simulation results show that it can represent the ionospheric channel more accurately and has good consistence with the measured data.