A STATISTICAL METHOD TO EXTRACT INFORMATIONS ABOUT IONOSPHERE FROM RADIO ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS

Based on the analysis about the effects on the visibility function caused by the Faraday rotation, the multi-source observations and the errors in path difference compensation, it is confirmed, in this paper, that only the phase induced by the ionospheric irregularities with scale sizes larger than the base line length, is proportional to the base line length, and is characterized by rapid time variations. Then a statistical method to extract informations about ionosphere from metre wave radio astronomical observations is provided, and the character of this method is analysed, some statistical examples are given also.