Eliminating negative VTEC in global ionosphere maps using inequality-constrained least squares

Currently, ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) stations of the International GNSS Service (IGS) are distributed unevenly around the world. Most of them are located on the mainland, while only a small part of them are scattered on some islands in the oceans. As a consequence, many unreasonable zero values (in fact negative values) appear in Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) of European Space Agency (ESA) and Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE) IONEX products, especially in 2008 and 2009 when the solar activities were rather quiet. To improve this situation, we directly implement non-negative physical constraints of ionosphere for global ionosphere maps (GIM) with spherical harmonic functions. Mathematically, we propose an inequality-constrained least squares method by imposing non-negative inequality constraints in the areas where negative VTEC values may occur to reconstruct GIM models. We then apply the new method to process the IGS data in 2008. The results have shown that the new algorithm efficiently eliminates the unwanted behavior of negative VTEC values, which could otherwise often be seen in the current CODE and ESA GIM products in both middle and high latitude areas of the Southern Hemisphere (45°S∼90°S) and the Northern Hemisphere (50°N∼90°N). About 64% of GPS receivers’ DCBs have been significantly improved. Finally, we compare the GIM results between with and without the inequality constraints, which has clearly shown that the GIM result with inequality constraints is significantly better than that without the inequality constraints. The inequality-constrained GIM result is also highly consistent with the final IGS products in terms of root mean squared (RMS) and mean VTEC.     

An inter-comparison of zenith tropospheric delays derived from DORIS and GPS data

Doppler Orbitography Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) techniques are similarly affected by propagation delays in the neutral atmosphere (troposphere) and hence make use of similar data processing strategies for reducing this effect. We compare Zenith Tropospheric Delays (ZTDs) estimated from 52 DORIS and GPS station pairs co-located at 35 sites over the 2005–2008 period. We find an overall systematic negative mean bias of −4 mm and a median bias of −2 mm, with a large site-to-site scatter and especially stronger biases over South America, potentially linked to remaining problems related to the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) in the current DORIS data processing. The standard deviation of ZTD differences is in the range 4–12 mm over the globe (8 mm on average), with larger values located in the southern hemisphere. The spatial variability of differences is consistent with previous work but remains largely unexplained. DORIS is shown to be much less sensitive to instrumental changes than GPS (only the switch from Alcatel to Starec antenna at Toulouse is detected as an offset of −4 mm in the ZTD time series). On the opposite, discontinuities and spurious annual signals are found in the GPS ZTD solutions. A discontinuity of +5 mm is found on 5 November 2006, linked to the switch from relative to absolute GPS antenna models used in the data processing. The use of modified GPS antennas (e.g. at GODE) or improved antenna models is shown to reduce the spurious annual signal (e.g. from 5 mm to 2 mm at METS). Overall, the agreement between both techniques is good, though DORIS shows a significantly larger random scatter. The high stability and good spatial and temporal coverage make DORIS a potential candidate technique for meteorology and climate studies as long as reasonable time averaging can be applied (e.g. differences are reduced from 8.6 to 2.4 mm with 5-day averages) and no real-time application is considered. This technique could be considered as a potential contributor to Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) for climatology.     

Ionospheric scintillations at Guilin detected by GPS ground-based and radio occultation observations

The occurrence of ionospheric scintillations with S4 ? 0.2 was studied using GPS measurements at Guilin, China (25.29°N, 110.33°E; geomagnetic: 15.04°N, 181.98°E), a station located near the northern crest of the equatorial anomaly. The results are presented for data collected from January 2009 to March 2010. The results show that nighttime amplitude scintillations only took place in February and March of the considered years, while daytime amplitude scintillations occurred in August and December of 2009. Nighttime amplitude scintillations, observed in the south of Guilin, always occurred with phase scintillations, TEC (Total Electron Content) depletions, and ROT (Rate Of change of TEC) fluctuations. However, TEC depletions and ROT fluctuations were weak during daytime amplitude scintillations, and daytime amplitude scintillations always took place simultaneously for most of the GPS satellites which appeared over Guilin in different azimuth directions. Ground-based GPS scintillation/TEC observations recorded at Guilin and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) measurements obtained from GPS-COSMIC radio occultation indicate that nighttime and daytime scintillations are very likely caused by ionospheric F region irregularities and sporadic E, respectively. Moreover, strong daytime amplitude scintillations may be associated with the plasma density enhancements in ionospheric E region caused by the Perseid and Geminid meteor shower activities.     

A global survey of COSMIC ionospheric peak electron density and its height: A comparison with ground-based ionosonde measurements

With a network of ground-based ionosondes distributed around the world, the ionospheric peak electron density and its height measured by FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC satellites in terms of GPS radio occultation technique are extensively examined in this article. It is found that, in spite of the latitude, the mean values of the peak electron density measured by COSMIC satellites are systematically smaller than those observed by ground-based ionosondes. The discrepancy between them is dependent on the latitude, namely, it is small in low and mid-latitudes and large in high-latitude region. Moreover, statistical analysis shows that the slopes of the regression line that is best fitted to the scatter diagram of occultation-retrieved peak electron density (ordinate axis) versus ionosonde-observed peak density (abscissa axis) are universally less than one. This feature is believed to be the result of path average effect of non-uniform distribution of the electron density along the GSP ray during the occultation. A comparison between COSMIC-measured peak height and ionosonde-derived peak height hmF2 indicates that the former is systematically higher than the latter. The difference in the two can be as large as 20% or more in equatorial and low-latitude regions. This result implies that the peak height hmF2 derived from the virtual height through true height analysis based on Titheridge method seems to underestimate the true peak height. The correlation between COSMIC and ionosonde peak electron densities is analyzed and the result reveals that correlation coefficient seems to be dependent on the fluctuation of the occultation-retrieved electron density profile. The correlation will be higher (lower) for the electron density profiles with smaller (larger) fluctuations. This feature suggests that the inhomogeneous distribution of the electron density along the GPS ray path during the occultation plays an important role affecting the correlation between COSMIC and ionosonde measurements.     

The geomagnetic solar flare effect identified by SIIG as an indicator of a solar flare observed by GOES satellites

This paper studies the efficiency of geomagnetic solar flare effects (gsfe) in X solar flare detection; so during the period 1999–2007 a comparison between solar flare (sf) observed by satellites of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) programme and gsfe published by the Service International des Indices Geomagnetiques (SIIG) is made.     

GPS姿态测量的载波相位整周模糊度快速解算

 根据 ARCE方法可以将模糊度搜索空间从所观测到的 m颗卫星的 m -1维降为 3维独立整周模糊度搜索空间,结合整数高斯变换及基线长度约束减小模糊度搜索空间,利用 Cholesky分解提高模糊度搜索效率,实验结果证明该方法能够快速解算整周模糊度适于实时姿态确定等应用。     

一种消除GPS模糊度相关性的新算法

 通过分析几种典型的整周模糊度去相关处理的方法 ,提出了一种简单快速消除GPS模糊度相关性的算法 ,介绍了算法中排序、整数LDLT 分解和模糊度筛选的处理过程 ,比较了该算法与其它算法性能上的差异 ,最后通过计算说明该算法的高效、可靠。     

基于解重扩算法的GPS抗干扰实时接收机研究

提出了一种基于解重扩算法的GPS抗干扰实时接收机系统的硬件实现方案。此方案充分利用解重扩算法和GPS接收机的特点,将两者紧密耦合,并根据FPGA和DSP的不同性能,实现了资源的合理配置。实测数据验证表明,该系统不仅能够抑制干扰信号,而且可对卫星信号产生较大增益,实现多波束抗干扰。     

基于车载平台的飞行管理系统DR/GPS 导航试验验证

飞行管理系统是民用飞机的关键航空电子系统。飞行管理系统制造商有责任对飞行管理系统开展大 量的试验以验证飞行管理系统功能和性能的符合性。考虑数字验证的局限性和飞行试验验证的巨大代价,本文 利用车载平台开展飞行管理系统综合导航功能的验证,试验结果表明设计的飞行管理系统DR/GPS 导航方法能 够满足95% 的飞行时间水平方向达到0.1 海里的导航精度要求,为实际的飞行测试提供了试验数据参考。     

基于渐消卡尔曼滤波器的定位系统设计

针对无人机捷联式惯性导航系统(Strap-down inertial navigation system,SINS)定位精度低、全球卫星定位系统(Global position system,GPS)定位的非自主性,建立了一种无人机SINS/GPS定位信息融合系统。采用渐消Kalman滤波技术,有效防止了SINS/GPS组合导航系统的滤波发散。采用自适应运算法则,从理论上证明了渐消卡尔曼滤波器的稳定性,得到了滤波器稳定要求的新的条件,与以往研究比较,条件更为宽泛。分别进行了SINS/GPS常规卡尔曼滤波仿真和渐消卡尔曼滤波仿真,结果表明:采用渐消卡尔曼滤波技术在工程实践上可以有效提高无人机的导航定位精度,并且易于工程实现。