This paper investigates the small scale plasma structures observed by ROCSAT-1 in the equatorial F region through the newly developed Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) method in the time (space) domain under the frozen-in approximation. The new method allows us to decompose the non-stationary, nonlinear data into a finite number of intrinsic scale modes. In this report the structures of vertical ion velocity and horizontal density gradient inside a plasma bubble are analyzed mode by mode anatomically without making the usual linearization assumption. We found that the intrinsic modes for velocity and density gradient of the selected event have identical wave form for structures with scales between 300 m and 50 m. This implies that the vertical velocity fluctuations induced from the electric field follows the exact Boltzmann relation in the limited regime of scale length between 300 m and 50 m. A spectral break at 50 m is clearly seen in the velocity HHT spectrum. The spectral form of velocity differs greatly from that of density gradient at scale lengths shorter than 50 m. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union