Space Weather & Telecommunications

The Origins of Space Weather.- The Ionosphere.- Telecommunication Systems.- Prediction Services and Systems.- Research Activities and Programs.- Epilogue.

John Goodman received his BS in Nuclear Engineering from N.C. State University in 1960 and his PhD in Physics from Catholic University of America in 1970. He has 44 years of government and industry experience in the RDT&E associated with radio and radar systems with emphasis on those categories that are influenced by the ionosphere. Specialties have included SATCOM and HF system impairment studies and the development of real-time-channel evaluation subsystems. He was with the Naval Research Laboratory from 1960-1991, and served a brief stint as Principal Scientific Consultant for Radio Communications at the SHAPE Technical Center at The Hague in the mid-80s. He was Program Manager for Radio Communications Technology at SRI International from 1991-1994, and he was Vice President for Applied Technology at TCI/BR Communications, headquartered in Sunnyvale California between 1994 and 1998. He is currently Vice President and Chief Technical Officer for Radio Propagation Services, Inc. (RPSI). Dr. Goodman has numerous publications, and he has been the Guest Editor for Special Issues of Radio Science issues on several occasions. He has organized a number of topical conferences, most notably the series of IES conferences held every three years since 1975. He is also author of the text: HF Communications: Science & Technology published by Van Nostrand Reinhold [1992], and a Chapter on "Meteor Burst Communications" in the Encyclopedia of Telecommunications published by Marcel Dekker. [1995]. He has been a guest author of an article entitled "Characteristics of the Ionosphere" appearing in the Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering [2002]. Dr. Goodman has lectured on a variety of space science issues, and has conducted specialized training courses under the aegis of the George Washington University.

Early in his career at NRL, Dr. Goodman was involved in radar investigations of the atmosphere and relevant space objects. He developed

"Goodman writes chronologically, and often describes his professional experiences as if recording a scientific jounral or diary. Thus, it is easy to follow the complex threads of physical science inquiry, as he travels from meeting to meeting where other scientists also present their findings.One need not be a mathematician to interpret the meanings of a few dozen equations. A bachelor's degree in physics, a related science, or engineering will suffice to comprehend fully the concepts.

In the first part, attention is given to the sun, the magnetosphere and geomagnetic storms, and the ionosphere. There is an excellent summary of recent work in modeling and prediction, and the author makes the point that 'we are now unfortunately faced with the job of predicting outcomes from models driven by parameters that also need to be predicted,' and continues on to address the unvertainty in this process. Readers engaged in the space weather field will find an excellent overview of the topic, which includes storm and ionospheric modeling. Attention is given to ionospheric layers, sporadic-E, solar flares, European Union (EU) COST action models, and scintillation models. A significant feature of the first part is that the names and organizations of researchers are cited. This allows the reader to reach into the literature for additional technical details about this research, most of which is recent or current.

The second part is devoted to studying propagation in the bands from extremely low frequency through extremely high frequency, which is essentially the entire real-world telecommunications spectrum. The growth in technology, including the extensive use of global positioning systems, suggests that this part has many innovations, particularly in the high frequency spectrum, in which the author makes the connection to space weather...

Goodman has produced a book that is readable, and presents a comprehensive up-to-date overview of the