SAMI2物理模型与东亚扇区GPS TEC数据 比较研究

SAMI2 (Sami2 is Another Model of the Ionosphere)是美国海军实验室开发的电离层物理模型.利用该物理模型,模拟了东亚扇区不同太阳活动强度、不同纬度地区三个站的电离层电子浓度总含量 (TEC). 通过模拟结果与GPS观测站 TEC 数据的比较,检验 SAMI2 在此扇区的电离层 TEC 计算精度. 结果表明,物理模型输出的电离层 TEC 具备与观测数据一致的周日变化、季节变化,太阳活动变化. 周日分布上,上午时段SAMI2? TEC 与观测数据吻合度优于午后时段;季节分布上,SAMI2 TEC 在冬季与观测值偏差小于其他季节;SAMI2? TEC 与GPS TEC 相关系数各站均达到0.87以上,与赤道地区Guam站相关性最好;太阳活动低年计算结果优于太阳活动高年;多数情况下,SAMI2 TEC 相对GPS TEC 偏大. 本文结果为基于SAMI2模型构建背景误差分布特征,开展该区域电离层数值预报研究可行性提供了理论支持.      

基于GPS观测分析青岛地区电离层板厚变化特性

基于青岛站2000年8月至2006年4月间半个太阳活动周的GPS和测高仪的同步观测,提取期间的电离层TEC和 f_o F₂的小时观测数据,联合分析该地区电离层板厚的日变化、季节变化和随太阳活动变化,研究表明青岛地区电离层板厚在日出前时段出现明显的增强峰,并随季节和太阳活动呈现出较复杂的变化关系.利用板厚的相对偏差,探讨了电离层板厚扰动变化分布特征.      

NeQuick模型算法研究及性能比较

研究了NeQuick2算法改进及其实现方法,从不同角度分析了NeQuick2模型在全球区域和中国区域内的性能优势。一个太阳活动周期内,中国区域NeQuick2模型计算的电子总含量（total electron content,TEC）比NeQuick1模型精度有显著提升,改正精度与太阳活动水平具有较强的相关性,低年比高年的改善效果更为显著。以全球电离层数据（global ionosphere maps,GIM）为参考标准,中国中高纬区域太阳活动低年NeQuick2模型TEC的系统年平均偏差减少了76%,年平均均方根（root mean square,RMS）值减少了约72%。太阳活动高年NeQuick2模型TEC的系统年平均偏差减少了38%,平均RMS减少了13%左右,且中高纬区域改正精度优于低纬区域11%~13%。全球区域太阳活动峰值期间NeQuick2模型TEC比NeQuick1模型日平均偏差改善了25%,日平均RMS改善了30%左右。分别用NeQuick1和NeQuick2模型得出F₂层顶部区域在太阳活动峰值期电子密度随高度剖面分布,顶部电子密度剖面精度改善近40%。最后分别得出了两个模型中国区域中高纬地区E和F₁层区域在100 km、150 km和200 km高度的电子密度分布图,结果显示NeQuick2模型改善了电子密度分布状况,有效避免了NeQuick1在底部区域电子密度梯度不连续以及电离层异常结构的情况。     

卫星导航服务的全球电离层时变特性分析

针对电离层对无线电波应用技术的影响,该文利用IGS提供的1998年—2012年的全球电离层TEC数据,结合相应的太阳活动数据,采用时间序列分析、相关性分析以及等值线图等数理统计的方法,分析了全球电离层的时变特性;分析了电离层TEC、F10.7和太阳黑子数的相关性,发现3者之间的相关系数高度线性相关。通过电离层日变化规律的研究发现:电离层TEC日极大值出现的时刻集中在当地时间12时至16时,其中14时占38.47%,12时占26.58%,16时占19.05%;夜间TEC值与太阳活动强度密切相关,在太阳活动低峰年,夜间全球电离层TEC平均值在5TECU左右,在太阳活动高峰年,夜间全球电离层TEC平均值在17TECU左右,最大值可达24TECU。最后,从日地距离和太阳活动强度两个方面,讨论了全球电离层TEC季节变化规律以及成因。     

广西及周边地区电离层时空特性分析北大核心CSCD

针对电离层延迟对导航定位精度的影响,该文利用IGS提供的2012—2015年的电离层VTEC数据,基于时序分析、快速傅里叶分析和线性回归分析方法,研究了广西及周边地区电离层的时空变化,结合相应的太阳、地磁活动数据分析太阳活动、地磁活动与电离层的相关性。结果显示:广西及周边地区电离层VTEC值在纬向上随纬度升高而降低,在经向上几乎不变;探测得到VTEC具有365.7天的年周期和182.9天的半年周期;无论在太阳活动高、低年,VTEC春季达最大值,2014年和2015年出现冬季异常现象;VTEC变化与太阳长期活动存在较好相关性,相关系数在0.57左右;VTEC在地磁活动高发期时与Dst有较好的相关性,相关系数达0.52。     

广西及周边地区电离层时空特性分析

针对电离层延迟对导航定位精度的影响,该文利用IGS提供的2012—2015年的电离层VTEC数据,基于时序分析、快速傅里叶分析和线性回归分析方法,研究了广西及周边地区电离层的时空变化,结合相应的太阳、地磁活动数据分析太阳活动、地磁活动与电离层的相关性。结果显示:广西及周边地区电离层VTEC值在纬向上随纬度升高而降低,在经向上几乎不变;探测得到VTEC具有365.7天的年周期和182.9天的半年周期;无论在太阳活动高、低年,VTEC春季达最大值,2014年和2015年出现冬季异常现象;VTEC变化与太阳长期活动存在较好相关性,相关系数在0.57左右;VTEC在地磁活动高发期时与Dst有较好的相关性,相关系数达0.52。     

利用单站地基GPS数据反演电离层电子密度

利用单站GPS观测数据对GPS硬件系统延迟作出修正,得到较精确的电离层总电子含量。根据Chapman电离层理论,建立电离层模型,利用遗传算法优化选择电离层关键参量,反演得到接收机上空电子密度剖面,结果表明：该方法用于太阳活动高年白天电子密度剖面反演效果优于国际参考电离层。     

京津冀地区电离层时空特性分析

为了研究分析京津冀地区的电离层时空变化特性,为本地区提供高精度导航定位和授时(PNT)服务,该文以国际GNSS服务(IGS)中心提供的2000—2018年的全球电离层总电子含量(TEC)格网模型产品数据为基础,研究该区域电离层时空分布特性及太阳活动与电离层的相关性。结果表明:电离层TEC与F10.7指数相关系数为0.83,与太阳黑子数相关系数为0.78,与太阳活动呈现出高度相关性;京津冀地区TEC每日最大值出现在UTC4时左右,电离层TEC具有较明显的27 d周期特性,在太阳活动高年及TEC极大递减年会出现冬季异常现象;白天,同一经度TEC值随纬度的升高而降低;同一纬度TEC值随经度的升高没有明显变化。     

中国区域电离层相关结构对卫星增强系统的影响

利用GPS测量数据对中国低纬区域的电离层相关结构特性进行了分析研究，并进一步和美国区域的数据处理结果进行了比较。结果表明：中国低纬地区存在的电离层异常是影响卫星增强系统中电离层延迟误差修正及完好性实现的重要因素，并且即使在低年，电离层异常的这种影响也存在。     

电离层闪烁对卫星导航系统性能影响的仿真分析

电离层闪烁是影响卫星导航系统定位性能的重要因素之一。通过仿真方法对中国区域用户定位性能受电离层闪烁影响的情况进行分析研究。结合电离层闪烁模型、卫星导航接收机模型和用户定位算法,仿真了中国区域内卫星导航系统用户在电离层闪烁存在情况下的定位精度性能。仿真结果表明：电离层闪烁将引起用户接收机测量误差的增大,在受电离层闪烁影响严重的中国低纬地区,用户定位误差将有明显增大,严重时可能出现定位异常。     

Performance of the L2C civil GPS signal under various ionospheric scintillation effects

As GPS is modernizing, there are currently fourteen satellites transmitting L2C civil code and seven satellites transmitting L5 signal. While the GPS observables are subject to several sources of errors, the ionosphere is one of the largest error sources affecting GPS signals. Small irregularities in the electrons density along the GPS radio signal propagation path cause ionospheric scintillation that is characterized by rapid fluctuations in the signal amplitude and phase. The ionospheric scintillation effects are stronger in equatorial and high-latitude geomagnetic latitude regions and occur mainly due to equatorial anomaly and solar storms. Several researchers have analyzed the L2C signal quality since becoming available in December, 2005. We analyze the performance of L2C using GPS data from stations in the equatorial region of Brazil, which is subject of weak, moderate and strong ionospheric scintillation conditions. The GPS data were collected by Septentrio PolaRxS–PRO receivers as part of the CIGALA/CALIBRA network. The analysis was performed as a function of scintillations indexes S4 and Phi60, lock time (time interval in seconds that the carrier phase is tracked continuously without cycle slips), multipath RMS and position variation of precise point positioning solutions. The analysis shows that L2C code solutions are less affected by multipath effects than that of P2 when data are collected under weak ionospheric scintillation effects. In terms of analysis of positions, the kinematic PPP results using L2C instead P2 codes show accuracy improvements up to 33 % in periods of weak or strong ionospheric scintillation. When combining phase and code collected under weak scintillation effects, the results by applying L2C against P2 provide improvement in accuracy up to 59 %. However, for data under strong scintillation effects, the use of L2C for PPP with code and phase does not provide improvements in the positioning accuracy.     

Ionospheric F-layer global scintillation index variation using COSMIC during the period of 2007–2013

The three-dimensional global morphology and seasonal characteristics of the ionospheric scintillation index of the F-layer between 150 and 550 km altitudes are analyzed using the GPS radio occultation measurements from the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere and Climate during the 7-year period of low and high sunspot activity from 2007 to 2013. The results show that the prominent scintillation intensity, which is confined within ±30° geomagnetic latitude, starts at post-sunset, reaches a maximum at around pre-midnight, and often persists until postmidnight. Moderate scintillation activity can be observed in the high-latitude region almost at any time, whereas weak scintillation prevails in the midlatitude region. The noticeable scintillation peak near midnight occurs at an altitude of approximately 250 km in most cases. However, the peak of the scintillation activity during the solar maximum extends to higher altitudes than observed during the solar minimum. Additionally, the local variation in time and altitude of the scintillation intensity is closely correlated with ionospheric HmF2. Statistical analysis indicates that an increase in solar activity or geomagnetic activity enhances the occurrence rate of scintillation and results in intense scintillation. The current research is beneficial for directly studying global ionospheric irregularities at GHz frequency based on high-rate L1 data and constructing a global scintillation model.     

Correlation between ROTI and Ionospheric Scintillation Indices using Hong Kong low-latitude GPS data

The correlation between the rate of TEC index (ROTI) and scintillation indices S ₄ and σ _Φ for low-latitude region is analyzed in this study, using data collected from a Global Positioning System (GPS) scintillation monitoring receiver installed at the south of Hong Kong for the periods June–August of 2012 and May 2013 and July–December of 2013. The analysis indicates that the correlation coefficient between ROTI and S ₄/σ _Φ is about 0.6 if data from all GPS satellites are used together. If each individual satellite is considered, the correlation coefficients are above 0.6 on average and sometimes above 0.8. The analysis also shows that the ratio of ROTI and S ₄ varies between 1 and 4. The ratio ROTI/σ _Φ, varies between 2 and 9. In addition, it is also found that there is a good consistency between the temporal variations of ROTI with scintillation activity under different ionospheric conditions. ROTI has a high correlation relationship with scintillation indices on geomagnetically disturbed days or in solar active months. Moreover, the data observed at low elevation angles have weak correlation between ROTI and scintillation indices. These results demonstrate the feasibility of using ROTI derived from GPS observations recorded by common non-scintillation GPS receivers to characterize ionospheric scintillations.     

Investigating the inconsistency of ionospheric ROTI indices derived from GPS modernized L2C and legacy L2 P(Y) signals at low-latitude regions

GPS Solutions - The rate of change of total electron content (TEC) index (ROTI), an important parameter to characterize ionospheric irregularities and associated scintillation activities, can be...     

Climatological study of ionospheric irregularities over the European mid-latitude sector with GPS

High-frequency variability of the ionosphere, or irregularities, constitutes the main threat for real-time precise positioning techniques based on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) measurements. Indeed, during periods of enhanced ionospheric variability, GNSS users in the field—who cannot verify the integrity of their measurements—will experience positioning errors that can reach several decimeters, while the nominal accuracy of the technique is cm-level. In the frame of this paper, a climatological analysis of irregularities over the European mid-latitude region is presented. Based on a 10 years GPS dataset over Belgium, the work analyzes the occurrence rate (as a function of the solar cycle, season and local time) as well as the amplitude of ionospheric irregularities observed at a single GPS station. The study covers irregularities either due to space weather events (solar origin) or of terrestrial origin. If space weather irregularities are responsible for the largest effects in terms of ionospheric error, their occurrence rate highly depends on solar activity. Indeed, the occurrence rate of ionospheric irregularities is about 9 % during solar maximum, whereas it drops to about 0 % during medium or low solar activity periods. Medium-scale ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) occurring during daytime in autumn/winter are the most recurrent pattern of the time series, with yearly proportions slightly varying with the solar cycle and an amplitude of about 10 % of the TEC background. Another recurrent irregularity type, though less frequent than MSTIDs, is the noise-like variability in TEC observed during summer nighttime, under quiet geomagnetic conditions. These summer nighttime irregularities exhibit amplitudes ranging between 8 and 15 % of the TEC background.     

Determination of the ionospheric foF2 using a stand-alone GPS receiver

The critical frequency of ionospheric F2 layer (foF2) is a measure of the highest frequency of radio signal that may be reflected back by the F2 layer, and it is associated with ionospheric peak electron density in the F2 layer. Accurate long-term foF2 variations are usually derived from ionosonde observations. In this paper, we propose a new method to observe foF2 using a stand-alone global positioning system (GPS) receiver. The proposed method relies on the mathematical equation that relates foF2 to GPS observations. The equation is then implemented in the Kalman filter algorithm to estimate foF2 at every epoch of the observation (30-s rate). Unlike existing methods, the proposed method does not require any additional information from ionosonde observations and does not require any network of GPS receivers. It only requires as inputs the ionospheric scale height and the modeled plasmaspheric electron content, which practically can be derived from any existing ionospheric/plasmaspheric model. We applied the proposed method to estimate long-term variations of foF2 at three GPS stations located at the northern hemisphere (NICO, Cyprus), the southern hemisphere (STR1, Australia) and the south pole (SYOG, Antarctic). To assess the performance of the proposed method, we then compared the results against those derived by ionosonde observations and the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) 2012 model. We found that, during the period of high solar activity (2011–2012), the values of absolute mean bias between foF2 derived by the proposed method and ionosonde observations are in the range of 0.2–0.5 MHz, while those during the period of low solar activity (2009–2010) are in the range of 0.05–0.15 MHz. Furthermore, the root-mean-square-error (RMSE) values during high and low solar activities are in the range of 0.8–0.9 MHz and of 0.6–0.7 MHz, respectively. We also noticed that the values of absolute mean bias and RMSE between foF2 derived by the proposed method and the IRI-2012 model are slightly larger than those between the proposed method and ionosonde observations. These results demonstrate that the proposed method can estimate foF2 with a comparable accuracy. Since the proposed method can estimate foF2 at every epoch of the observation, it therefore has promising applications for investigating various scales (from small to large) of foF2 irregularities.     

Further observations of GPS satellite oscillator anomalies mimicking ionospheric phase scintillation

An incident has previously been reported where the signal from the Navstar 43 Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite contained phase anomalies in such a way as to mimic ionospheric scintillation. We have observed another 25 events from the same satellite, plus events from three more satellites. Our data includes simultaneous observations from widely spaced receivers (up to 6,590 km apart), from different manufacturers, further ruling out the possibility of local effects. Two of the events involved a satellite (GPS IIF SV-2) broadcasting the L2C signal. This signal contained phase deviations matching those of the L1 signal, but with a 120/154 multiplicative factor. This rules out the possibility of a genuine ionospheric scintillation event, as it does not match the plasma dispersion relation. It does, however, agree with what can be expected from an anomaly in the satellite’s oscillator. While the previously reported event could be dismissed as a freak occurrence, it is now apparent that these events are a persistent phenomenon. They have the potential to corrupt geophysical research with false data and to generate false alarms in systems to forewarn of GPS outages due to scintillation.     

电离层延迟高阶项对GPS精密单点定位精度影响分析

随着GPS卫星轨道、钟差及各种误差修正模型的不断精化,静态精密单点定位(PPP)定位精度达到mm级,进行电离层延迟高阶项较小量级的误差改正研究,对改进PPP数据处理策略具有重要的参考价值。本文利用分布在不同地理纬度的5个IGS跟踪站3天的观测数据,对比分析了电离层延迟二阶项、三阶项对GPS观测值精度及静态PPP定位精度的影响。分析结果表明,电离层延迟二阶项、三阶项对GPS观测值精度的影响分别为cm级和mm级,对低纬度地区PPP定位精度的影响大于3 mm,但对中高纬度的测站观测值、定位精度的影响比低纬度地区小很多。      

GPS scintillation over the European Arctic during the November 2004 storms

Small-scale irregularities in the background electron density of the ionosphere can cause rapid fluctuations in the amplitude and phase of radio signals passing through it. These rapid fluctuations are known as scintillation and can cause a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to lose lock on a signal. This could compromise the integrity of a safety of life system based on GPS, operating in auroral regions. In this paper, the relationship between the loss of lock on GPS signals and ionospheric scintillation in auroral regions is explored. The period from 8 to 14 November 2004 is selected for this study, as it includes both geomagnetically quiet and disturbed conditions. Phase and amplitude scintillation are measured by GPS receivers located at three sites in Northern Scandinavia, and correlated with losses of signal lock in receivers at varying distances from the scintillation receivers. Local multi-path effects are screened out by rejection of low-elevation data from the analysis. The results indicate that losses of lock are more closely related to rapid fluctuations in the phase rather than the amplitude of the received signal. This supports the idea, suggested by Humphreys et al. (2005) (performance of GPS carrier tracking loops during ionospheric scintillations. Proceedings Internationsl Ionospheric Effects Symposium 3–5 May 2005), that a wide loop bandwidth may be preferred for receivers operating at auroral latitudes. Evidence from the Imaging Riometer for Ionospheric Studies (IRIS) appears to suggest that, for this particular storm, precipitation of particles in the D/E regions may be the mechanism that drives the rapid phase fluctuations in the signal.