Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves when they are transmitted, or propagated from one point on the Earth to another, or into various parts of the atmosphere. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected by the phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization and scattering.
I do research in both the optical and the radio frequency domains. They behave identically because they must both obey Maxwell's equations. There are two sources of differences, however. First, materials can have very different properties. Metals work great at RF, but are very lossy at optical frequencies. Second, they work at much different size scales so the devices look different simply because of our manufacturing methods at those different size scales.
Yes. Basically, optical wave is also Radio wave, precisely speaking, visible radio wave. Its wave length (or frequency) is such that the wave energy excites or resonates eye receptors. Hence human eye is able to see it, otherwise its radio wave with very very high frequency and part of redio spectrum
Radio waves propagating through atmosphere are reflected by the ionosphere. It's used in transmission techniques.
All those phenomena you specified, i.e, reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization and scattering are the common phenomena for electromagnetic (EM) waves. EM waves ranges from extremely low frequency (~3 Hz) to gamma rays (~300 EHz) are potentially able to show all those phenomena. When you deal with wave-matter interaction, the permittivity of the material you use becomes an important factor.
For example, using optical (common transparent) lenses for focusing x-rays is not practical. It doesn't mean that those rays are not able to show refraction: the problem is that the material you used is not the right choice for EM wave in that frequency to show refraction (if you want to know more refer X-ray optics).
Radio and Optical waves have the same nature with a difference in wavelengths. Both are electromagnetic waves obeying reflection, refraction, and diffraction. If these characteristics were not there, the existing radio and optical systems would not have worked. For instance, for radio waves reflection is used in sky wave transmission. For optical waves, reflection is used for propagation of light waves in optical fibers. For other characteristics, there are many examples. Of course, in some cases these characteristics would trouble the radio and optical transmissions, either.
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