Ionospheric forecasting model using fuzzy logic-based gradient descent method

Abstract

Space weather phenomena cause satellite to ground or satellite to aircraft transmission outages over the VHF to L-band frequency range, particularly in the low latitude region. Global Positioning System (GPS) is primarily susceptible to this form of space weather. Faulty GPS signals are attributed to ionospheric error, which is a function of Total Electron Content (TEC). Importantly, precise forecasts of space weather conditions and appropriate hazard observant cautions required for ionospheric space weather observations are limited. In this paper, a fuzzy logic-based gradient descent method has been proposed to forecast the ionospheric TEC values. In this technique, membership functions have been tuned based on the gradient descent estimated values. The proposed algorithm has been tested with the TEC data of two geomagnetic storms in the low latitude station of KL University, Guntur, India (16.44°N, 80.62°E). It has been found that the gradient descent method performs well and the predicted TEC values are close to the original TEC measurements.