This invention consists of a method for measuring the direction and magnitude of the semi-major and semi-minor axes (13, 14) of the electric ellipse (5) of an incoming wave in a magnetized plasma from the in-phase and quadrature measurements (12) of the electric field that is measured on three orthogonal antennas (1, 2, 3), in order to measure the line-of- sight of the direction of wave propagation (15), and the wave propagation mode (16, 17), from the orientation and rotation sense of the measured wave electric ellipse. In addition, for a wave that consists of a linear combination of the ordinary and extraordinary modes in a magnetized plasma, these measurements can also be used to measure the line-of-sight of the direction of wave propagation (20), and the Faraday rotation angle (21), from the orientation of the semi-major axes of the electric ellipse (17, 18) that are measured at two or more adjacent frequencies.
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