Investigation of the Earth ionosphere using the radio emission of pulsars

Abstract

The investigation of the Earth ionosphere both in a quiet and a disturbed states is still desirable. Despite recent progress in its modeling and in estimating the electron concentration along the line of sight by GPS signals, the impact of the disturbed ionosphere and magnetic field on the wave propagation still remains not sufficiently understood. This is due to lack of information on the polarization of GPS signals, and due to poorly conditioned models of the ionosphere at high altitudes and strong perturbations. In this article we consider a possibility of using the data of pulsar radio emission, along with the traditional GPS system data, for the vertical and oblique sounding of the ionosphere. This approach also allows to monitor parameters of the propagation medium, such as the dispersion measure and the rotation measure using changes of the polarization between pulses. By using a selected pulsar constellation it is possible to increase the number of directions in which parameters of the ionosphere and the magnetic field can be estimated.