Ionospheric Bubble Seeker: A Java Application to Detect and Characterize Ionospheric Plasma Depletion From GPS Data

A new postprocessing technique has been developed to detect and characterize equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) from slant total electron content values calculated from GPS observations. The technique identifies an EPB when a slant total electron content depletion is detected. This technique is based on the analysis of the slope and the population variance variations of the slant total electron content values. The Ionospheric Bubble Seeker, based on the Java programming language, has been developed to implement this technique, allowing its use in all operating systems and on the Internet. Several thousands of slant total electron content profiles from different stations around the equatorial region have been analyzed to configure it. Different stations distributed worldwide have been analyzed to evaluate the robustness of the technique. The results reveal a clear daily dependence, showing the influence of the seasonal, longitudinal, and solar activity conditions. These results are compared with previous studies accomplished from different techniques and measurements and show clear agreements in the results.