Mid-latitude amplitude scintillation of GPS signals and GPS performance slips

Degradation of transionospheric radio signals and operation failures during ionospheric disturbances constitute a crucial factor of space weather influence on radio engineering satellite systems performance. We found that during the main phase of strong magnetic storms in 2000–2003 when the auroral oval expands into mid-latitudes, its southern boundary develops a region with intense small-scale electron density irregularities. Such irregularities may cause strong amplitude scintillations of GPS signals at both GPS operating frequencies. The another consequence of it was significant random GPS signal phase fluctuations, breaking-down of signal tracking, and sharp increasing of GPS positioning errors as a result.     

Effects of a “day-time” substorm on the ionosphere and radio propagation

Propagation mechanisms of lateral (non-great-circle) signals on a high-latitude HF radio path during magnetospheric substorms that occurred in the day-time have been considered. The path is equipped with oblique ionospheric sounding (OIS) from Murmansk to St. Petersburg. The OIS method gives the possibility to determine propagation modes, MOF (maximum observed frequency) values, signal delays, etc. Data of the CUTLASS radar, the IMAGE magnetometer system, the Finnish riometer chain, and the Tromso ionosonde were also used for the analysis. The main results are the following: (1) the lateral signal propagation takes place, as a rule, if the path midpoint is located near the irregularity region that moves sharply from high to low latitudes. The lateral signal propagation appearing during day-time is a new effect. (2) Formation of dense field-aligned irregularities during a substorm leads to decreasing F2MOF values on radio paths. These results can be useful for problems of radiolocation, HF communications and navigation.     

New field of application of the IRI modeling – Determination of ionosphere transfer characteristic for radio astronomical signals

We suggest a new field of application of IRI modeling – determination of ionosphere transfer characteristic (ITC) for radio astronomical signals (RAS). VHF and HF RAS are widely used for observations of the Sun and pulsars. It is necessary to take into account possible distortions of RAS in the Earth ionosphere. However, in contrast to modern navigation systems (GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO), where very accurate reconstruction of ionosphere parameters is a built-in function, in present-day radio astronomy a retrieve of ITC has not been appropriately worked out yet. It collides with increasing requirements to accuracy of the analysis of RAS amplitude profile and to the angular and polarizing resolution of radio telescopes of new generation. We have developed a method and software for calculation of the ionosphere measure of rotation (RM) and the measure of dispersion (DM). We used the ionosphere model IRI-2001, magnetic-field model IGRF-10 and values of ionosphere total electron content as deduced from GPS measurements. The obtained values of the ionosphere DM and RM were recalculated into characteristics of phase delay, Faraday amplitude modulation and polarization changes. We made calculations for different levels of geomagnetic activity and for different angular position of radio sources as well.     

The high-latitude ionosphere structure on 22 March, 1979 magnetic storm from multi-satellite and ground-based observation

Variations in the high-latitude ionosphere structure during March 22, 1979 geomagnetic storm are examined. Electron density Ne and temperature Te from the Cosmos-900 satellite, NmF2, Ne and He⁺ from the ISS-b satellite, precipitation of soft electrons from the Intercosmos-19 satellite, and the global picture of the auroral electron precipitation from the DMSP, TIROS and P78 satellites are used. These multi-satellite databases allow us to investigate the storm-time variations in the locations of the following ionospheric structures: the day-time cusp, the equatorial boundary of the diffuse auroral precipitation (DPB), the main ionospheric trough (MIT), the day-time trough, the ring ionospheric trough (RIT) and the light ions trough (LIT). The variations in NmF2, Ne, He⁺ and Te in the high-latitude ionosphere for the different local time sectors are analyzed also. The features of the high-latitude ionospheric response to a strong magnetic storm are described.     

Anthropogenic trigger of substorms and energetic particles precipitations

The high-frequency (HF) emission in near-Earth space from various powerful transmitters (radio communications, radars, broadcasting, universal time and navigation stations, etc.) form an integral part of the modern world that it cannot do without. In particular, special-purpose research facilities equipped with powerful HF transmitters are used successfully for plasma experiments and local modification of the ionosphere. In this work, we are using the results of a complex space-ground experiment to show that exposure of the subauroral region to HF emission can not only cause local changes in the ionosphere, but can also trigger processes in the magnetosphere–ionosphere system that result in intensive substorm activity (precipitations of high-energy particles, aurorae, significant variations in the ionospheric parameters and, as a consequence, in radio propagation conditions).     

First results of operational ionospheric dynamics prediction for the Brazilian Space Weather program

It is shown the development and preliminary results of operational ionosphere dynamics prediction system for the Brazilian Space Weather program. The system is based on the Sheffield University Plasmasphere–Ionosphere Model (SUPIM), a physics-based model computer code describing the distribution of ionization within the Earth mid to equatorial latitude ionosphere and plasmasphere, during geomagnetically quiet periods. The model outputs are given in a 2-dimensional plane aligned with Earth magnetic field lines, with fixed magnetic longitude coordinate. The code was adapted to provide the output in geographical coordinates. It was made referring to the Earth’s magnetic field as an eccentric dipole, using the approximation based on International Geomagnetic Reference Field (IGRF-11). During the system operation, several simulation runs are performed at different longitudes. The original code would not be able to run all simulations serially in reasonable time. So, a parallel version for the code was developed for enhancing the performance. After preliminary tests, it was frequently observed code instability, when negative ion temperatures or concentrations prevented the code from continuing its processing. After a detailed analysis, it was verified that most of these problems occurred due to concentration estimation of simulation points located at high altitudes, typically over 4000 km of altitude. In order to force convergence, an artificial exponential decay for ion–neutral collisional frequency was used above mentioned altitudes. This approach shown no significant difference from original code output, but improved substantially the code stability. In order to make operational system even more stable, the initial altitude and initial ion concentration values used on exponential decay equation are changed when convergence is not achieved, within pre-defined values. When all code runs end, the longitude of every point is then compared with its original reference station longitude, and differences are compensated by changing the simulation point time slot, in a temporal adjustment optimization. Then, an approximate neighbor searching technique was developed to obtain the ion concentration values in a regularly spaced grid, using inverse distance weighting (IDW) interpolation. A 3D grid containing ion and electron concentrations is generated for every hour of simulated day. Its spatial resolution is 1° of latitude per 1° of longitude per 10 km of altitude. The vertical total electron content (VTEC) is calculated from the grid, and plotted in a geographic map. An important feature that was implemented in the system is the capacity of combining observational data and simulation outputs to obtain more appropriate initial conditions to the ionosphere prediction. Newtonian relaxation method was used for this data assimilation process, where ionosonde data from four different locations in South America was used to improve the system accuracy. The whole process runs every day and predicts the VTEC values for South America region with almost 24 h ahead.     

Simulation study on slant-to-vertical deviation in two dimensional TEC mapping over the ionosphere equatorial anomaly

With the rapid increase of GPS/GNSS receivers being deployed and operated in China, real-time GPS data from nearly a thousand sites are available at the National Center for Space Weather, China Meteorology Administration. However, it is challenging to generate a high-quality regional total electron content (TEC) map with the traditional two-dimensional (2-D) retrieval scheme because a large horizontal gradient has been reported over east–south Asia due to the northern equatorial ionization anomaly. We developed an Ionosphere Data Assimilation Analysis System (IDAAS), which is described in this study, using an International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model as the background and applying a Kalman filter for updated observations. The IDAAS can reconstruct a three-dimensional ionosphere with the GPS slant TEC. The inverse slant TEC correlates well with observations both for GPS sites involved in the reconstruction and sites that are not involved. Based on the IDAAS, simulations were performed to investigate the deviation relative to the slant-to-vertical conversion (STV). The results indicate that the relative deviation induced by slant-to-vertical conversion may be significant in certain instances, and the deviation varies from 0% to 40% when the elevation decreases from 90° to 15°, while the relative IDAAS deviation is much smaller and varies from −5% to 15% without an elevation dependence. Compared with ‘true TEC’ map derived from the model, there is large difference in STV TEC map but no obvious discrepancy in IDAAS map. Generally, the IDAAS TEC map is much closer to the “true TEC” than is STV TEC map is.     

Non-parametric regional VTEC modeling with Multivariate Adaptive Regression B-Splines

In this work Multivariate Adaptive Regression B-Splines (BMARS) is applied to regional spatio-temporal mapping of the Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) using ground based Global Positioning System (GPS) observations. BMARS is a non-parametric regression technique that utilizes compactly supported tensor product B-splines as basis functions, which are automatically obtained from the observations. The algorithm uses a scale-by-scale model building strategy that searches for B-splines at each scale fitting adequately to the data and provides smoother approximations than the original Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS). It is capable to process high dimensional problems with large amounts of data and can easily be parallelized. The real test data is collected from 32 ground based GPS stations located in North America. The results are compared numerically and visually with both the regional VTEC modeling generated via original MARS using piecewise-linear basis functions and another regional VTEC modeling based on B-splines.     

Total electron content monitoring using triple frequency GNSS: Results with Giove-A/-B data

Triple frequency GNSS will be fully operational within the next decade, opening opportunities for new applications. Dual frequency GNSS already allow to study the ionosphere through the estimation of Total Electron Content (TEC). However, the precision is limited by the ambiguity resolution process. This paper studies a triple frequency TEC monitoring technique in which the use of Geometry-Free and Iono-Free linear combinations improves the ambiguity resolution process and therefore the precision of TEC. We have tested it on a set of triple frequency Giove-A/-B data from January and December 2008. The conclusions achieved are (1) TEC values are affected by an error of about 2–2.5 TECU produced through the ambiguity resolution process; (2) the error caused by the Geometric Free phase combination delays (hardware, multipath, noise, antenna phase center) on TEC is about 0.2 TECU; (3) the total error on TEC approximately reach 2–3 TECU.     

An Adaptive Network-based Fuzzy Inference System for the detection of thermal and TEC anomalies around the time of the Varzeghan,Iran, (Mw = 6.4) earthquake of 11 August 2012

Anomaly detection is extremely important for forecasting the date, location and magnitude of an impending earthquake. In this paper, an Adaptive Network-based Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) has been proposed to detect the thermal and Total Electron Content (TEC) anomalies around the time of the Varzeghan, Iran, (M_w = 6.4) earthquake jolted in 11 August 2012 NW Iran. ANFIS is the famous hybrid neuro-fuzzy network for modeling the non-linear complex systems. In this study, also the detected thermal and TEC anomalies using the proposed method are compared to the results dealing with the observed anomalies by applying the classical and intelligent methods including Interquartile, Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA), Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) methods. The duration of the dataset which is comprised from Aqua-MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) night-time snapshot images and also Global Ionospheric Maps (GIM), is 62 days. It can be shown that, if the difference between the predicted value using the ANFIS method and the observed value, exceeds the pre-defined threshold value, then the observed precursor value in the absence of non seismic effective parameters could be regarded as precursory anomaly. For two precursors of LST and TEC, the ANFIS method shows very good agreement with the other implemented classical and intelligent methods and this indicates that ANFIS is capable of detecting earthquake anomalies. The applied methods detected anomalous occurrences 1 and 2 days before the earthquake. This paper indicates that the detection of the thermal and TEC anomalies derive their credibility from the overall efficiencies and potentialities of the five integrated methods.