Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of the Reentry Plasma Sheath on Electromagnetic Wave Propagation

This paper investigates the dynamic effects of the reentry plasma sheath on electromagnetic wave propagation from the viewpoint of communication. Both the spatial turbulence and the temporal variation of the plasma electron density are included in our model, and the transmission matrix method is employed to investigate the interactions between the plasma and the electromagnetic wave. The simulation results indicated that because of the nonlinear property of plasma, the amplitude variation caused by the plasma sheath has a lognormal distribution, while the phase fluctuation is Rayleigh distributed. Moreover, with a higher relative variation intensity, the probability density function curves become more decentralized, indicating larger channel dynamics of both amplitude variation and phase fluctuation. The power spectrum broadening phenomena caused by the plasma sheath are also investigated and discussed.