Power line harmonic radiation observed by satellite: Properties and propagation through the ionosphere

International audienceWe present results of a systematic survey of power line harmonic radiation events observed by the low-altitude DEMETER spacecraft. Altogether, 88 events (45 with frequency spacing 50/100 Hz and 43 with frequency spacing 60/120 Hz) have been found by an automatic identification procedure and confirmed by visual inspection. Frequency-Time intervals of individual lines forming the events have been found by an automated procedure, and the corresponding frequency-time spectrograms have been fitted by a 2d-Gaussian model. It is shown that the mean time duration of the lines forming the events is 20 seconds, with median being 12 seconds (this corresponds to the spatial dimensions of 156/90 km, respectively). The full width at half maximum of the frequency range of the lines is less than 3 Hz in the majority of cases. Moreover, the lines with larger bandwidth and the lines with the largest intensities often occur off exact multiples of base power system frequency. This can be explained either by wave-particle interactions that take place and modify the radiated electromagnetic wave or by the improperly operating radiating power system. Full-wave calculation of the efficiency of coupling of electromagnetic waves through the ionosphere has been done to show that it can explain lower intensity of events observed by satellite during the day as compared with those observed during the night. Estimated radiated peak power on the ground is larger for events observed during the day than for events observed during the night, and more events are observed during the day than during the night