Preliminary research on imaging the ionosphere using CIT and China permanent GPS tracking station data

Abstract

A GNSS-based platform for imaging ionosphere and atmosphere (GPFIIA) is being developed at the institute of geodesy and geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and School of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences, RMIT University. The GPFIIA will be an important part of a scientific software platform for processing and analyzing a large amount of different types of data associated with ever increasing number of GNSS and low-orbit earth observation satellites. Currently, GPFIIA can combine a voxel-based ionosphere tomographic technique with ground-based and space-based GPS data to image the ionospheric electron density (IED) distribution over the area of coverage, to study the vertical structures and related properties of the ionosphere, as well as improving the accuracy of ionospheric delay correction. Dual frequency GPS data selected from the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China and some simulated GPS/MET data on 1 March 2003 are used to invert a time series of the IED profiles over China using to mographic algorithms. The reconstructed IED profiles were partially validated with those obtained using the IRI2001 model. The inverted results illustrate some active characteristics of the IED. The difficulties yet to be solved for using GPS data to invert the IED profiles in China are discussed and some suggestions are given for further investigation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.