Title :
GPS-based ionospheric tomography with constrained IRI as a regularization
Author :
Ming Ou ; Hong-bo Zhang ; Wei-Min Zhen
Author_Institution :
China Res. Inst. of Radiowave Propagation, Qingdao, China
Abstract :
Recent developments in ionosphere remote sensing, in particular techniques using the global positioning system (GPS) provide an unprecedented capability for monitoring the state of the ionosphere, its reaction to solar-terrestrial events as well as ionospheric wave phenomena. There have been many methods that were suggested to study the feasibility of using the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model as a regularization profile for ionospheric tomography experiments. Due to the limited-angle geometry, the vertical precision of ground-based GPS ionospheric tomography still needs to be improved to meet the requirements of some applications, such as monitoring the ionospheric distributions during the ionospheric storm periods. HmF2 (peak height of F2 layer of ionosphere) obtained by vertical soundings as a constrained parameter to IRI will improve the vertical resolution of the ground-base GPS ionospheric tomography. Vertical and oblique sounding data obtained from CRIRP while TEC data obtained from a meridional chain of 6 GPS satellite receivers located in China are used for reconstruction of the mid and low latitude ionosphere, maximum entropy regularization method was used to solve the discrete ill-posed problems, numerical simulations show that the constrained IRI has the potential of becoming a effective regularization profile for ground-based GPS ionospheric tomographic reconstruction of the ionosphere. It has also been observed that the foF2 values obtained from reconstructed images that use constrained IRI as a regularization profile are closer to measured values than those obtained from the images reconstructed with the original IRI regularization profile.
Keywords :
F-region; Global Positioning System; entropy; geophysical signal processing; ionospheric techniques; numerical analysis; remote sensing; tomography; CRIRP; F2 layer peak height; GPS based ionospheric tomography; IRI model; International Reference Ionosphere model; TEC data; constrained IRI regularization; discrete ill posed problems; global positioning system; ground based GPS ionospheric tomography; ionospheric distribution monitoring; ionospheric remote sensing; ionospheric state; ionospheric storm periods; ionospheric tomography experiments; ionospheric wave phenomena; limited angle geometry; low latitude ionosphere; maximum entropy regularization method; midlatitude ionosphere; numerical simulations; oblique sounding data; reconstruction; regularization profile; solar-terrestrial events; vertical sounding data; vertical tomographic precision; Entropy; Global Positioning System; Image reconstruction; Ionosphere; Satellite broadcasting; Satellites; Tomography;
Conference_Titel :
Antennas, Propagation & EM Theory (ISAPE), 2012 10th International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Xian
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4673-1799-3
DOI :
10.1109/ISAPE.2012.6408856