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Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves as they travel, or are propagated, from one point to another in vacuum, or into various parts of the atmosphere. [1]: 26‑1 As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected by the phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering. [2]
Radio waves were first predicted by the theory of electromagnetism that was proposed in 1867 by Scottish mathematical physicist James Clerk Maxwell. [5] His mathematical theory, now called Maxwell's equations, predicted that a coupled electric and magnetic field could travel through space as an "electromagnetic wave".
Radio waves are defined by the ITU as: "electromagnetic waves of frequencies arbitrarily lower than 3000 GHz, propagated in space without artificial guide". [5] At the high frequency end the radio spectrum is bounded by the infrared band. The boundary between radio waves and infrared waves is defined at different frequencies in different ...
Astronomers have detected one of the most distant and energetic mysterious fast radio bursts in space, a millisecond-long blast of radio waves that traveled 8 billion years to reach Earth.
The radio waves carry the information across space to a receiver, where they are received by an antenna and the information extracted by demodulation in the receiver. Radio waves are also used for navigation in systems like Global Positioning System (GPS) and navigational beacons, and locating distant objects in radiolocation and radar.
However, at energies too low to excite water vapor, the atmosphere becomes transparent again, allowing free transmission of most microwave and radio waves. [51] Finally, at radio wavelengths longer than 10 m or so (about 30 MHz), the air in the lower atmosphere remains transparent to radio, but plasma in certain layers of the ionosphere begins ...
In radio communication, used in radio and television broadcasting, cell phones, two-way radios, wireless networking, and satellite communication, among numerous other uses, radio waves are used to carry information across space from a transmitter to a receiver, by modulating the radio signal (impressing an information signal on the radio wave ...
The radio window is the region of the radio spectrum that penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. Typically, the lower limit of the radio window's range has a value of about 10 MHz (λ ≈ 30 m); the best upper limit achievable from optimal terrestrial observation sites is equal to approximately 1 THz (λ ≈ 0.3 mm).