Approaches for modeling ionosphere irregularities based on the TEC rate index

Abstract

The ionosphere plays an important role in GNSS applications because it influences radio wave propagation. The ionospheric delay is the biggest error source for satellite navigation signals, but it can be directly measured and mitigated using dual-frequency GNSS receivers. However, the GNSS signal fades because of electron density gradients and irregularities in the ionosphere, decreasing the operational performance of navigation systems. Recently, several models were developed to reproduce the ionospheric fluctuations and scintillation activity under different geophysical conditions, but these models were calibrated with data sets without GNSS-derived experimental total electron content (TEC) data. There is a great demand for a proper model of ionospheric irregularity specification based on GNSS TEC measurements. In this work, we use data from the permanent GNSS network to develop the empirical model of the ionospheric irregularities over the Northern Hemisphere. As initial data, we used the daily dependences of the rate of TEC index (ROTI) as a function of geomagnetic local time on the specific grid. The ROTI maps allow us to estimate the overall fluctuation activity and the auroral oval evolution. The irregularities of the southern oval border were determined with the ROTI. This paper presents the correlation between the Kp geomagnetic index and parameters that characterized the activity of the ionosphere irregularities in 2010 to 2013.