Evaporation Duct Modelling for a Wave-Propagation Simulator

Abstract: Long-range communication proves to be a challenge due to the Earth’s curvature, since electromagnetic waves propagate away from the Earth’s surface in a free atmosphere. A possible solution to beyond line-of-sight communication is the atmospheric phenomenon known as the evaporation duct. Ducting occurs when the refractive index of the atmosphere rapidly decreases with height, which leads to ray trajectories bending inward towards the surface of the Earth, effectively creating a waveguide and enabling long-distance communication. In this work, the models by Paulus-Jeske and Babin-Young-Carton are investigated and implemented in MATLAB for calculation of the evaporation duct height and for modelling the refractive index of the atmosphere. The rapid decrease in refractive index giving rise to evaporation ducts occurs due to evaporation of water within the atmosphericsurface layer (<100 m over the surface), which is the domain of turbulent mixing in the atmosphere. With atmospheric data from a Weather API by Meteomatics, Monin-Obukhov similarity theory for the atmospheric surface layer is combined with a bulk flux parameterization scheme from the COARE experiment to determine the air-sea fluxes in the lower troposphere. The surface layer variables with stability functions from Businger-Dyer, Beljaars-Holtslag, Cheng-Brutsaert, and the SHEBA experiment are used in the evaporation duct models proposed by Paulus-Jeske and Babin-Young-Carton to calculate the evaporation duct height, finding that the latter is a valid method with Monin-Obukhov stability functions based on the SHEBA experiment. The modelled refractive index is inserted into an already existing wave propagation model to investigate and validate the findings.