Toward a SIRGAS service for mapping the Ionosphere's electron density distribution

Abstract

SIRGAS is responsible of the terrestrial reference frame of Latin America and the Caribbean. To fulfil this commitment it manages a continuously operational GNSS network with more than 200 receivers. Although that network was not planed for ionospheric studies, SIRGAS attempted to exploit it by establishing, in early 2008, a regular service for computing regional maps of the vertical Total Electron Content. This paper describes an effort for developing a new SIRGAS product, concretely, a 4-dimensional (space and time) representation of the free electron distribution in the ionosphere. The working methodology is based on the ingestion of dual-frequency GNSS observations into a global electron density model in order to update its parameters. Preliminary results are presented and their quality is assessed by comparing the electron density computed with the methodology here described and the one estimated from totally independent observations. A preliminary analysis reveals that the performance of the electron density model improves by a factor greater than 2 after data ingestion. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.