Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Shortwave Broadcast Reception in the Baltics

Authors of this Study conducted monitoring in March 2008, in the Northern Latvia and in May 2008, in Northern Estonia. In most cases the derived a statistical model of channel variation from observed data sets verifies the log-normal nature of the signal amplitude distributions. However, in many cases the outcome fitting the measured field strength histograms to various distributions using MATLAB suggest the Birnbaum-Saunders distribution as the best match. The B-S distribution is not used before in conjunction with ionospheric channel evaluation. The variation in channel quality over time is an important characteristic of the ionospheric medium. Using the Birnbaum-Saunders distribution in conjunction of ionospheric data gives alternative approach for interpretation monitoring results and for channel simulation. Ill. 5, bibl. 5 (in English; Summaries in English, Russian and Lithuanian).