In connection with our paper submitted to APS 2023, we show here an animation depicting the richness and variation of electric field realizations across our custom-built antenna array over distances up to 60km. Over short time spans/distances, there is consistency in the magnitude of the signal at a particular array element. Meanwhile, there is variation in that signal across the array of elements. We hypothesize that the power distribution seen across the array elements will serve as a sort of “fingerprint” that will allow for neural network modeling of the range characterization in similar atmospheric conditions.

Each animation represents one pairing of emitter polarization (TX=H or V) and receiver polarization (RX=H or V). “Sweeps” represent the 20 times per second that receiver collected information from each element of the antenna array. The “fingerprints” visible along the y axis change slowly with the range (shown in upper right, which counts up to ~60km (outbound/southbound voyage) and then back down (inbound/northbound voyage).