Real time Ionospheric determination at global scale

Abstract

The global ionospheric determination has been possible in the last 15 years thanks to the availability of a new type of ionospheric sensor with a very high spatial and temporal sampling: the dual-frequency GPS receivers. Indeed, several hundreds of them, worldwide distributed, are freely available, tracking typically 6+ GPS satellites in view, providing at every epoch several thousands of line-of-sight integrated free electron densities (Slant Total Electron Content, STEC). This has allowed in particular to compute and freely distribute global Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) maps, in the context of the open- product organization called International GNSS Service (IGS), which applications run from single frequency receivers (accurate mitigation of ionospheric delay), calibration of new altimeters (such as the SMOS mission) up to the potential use for increasing the performance of positioning based on carrier phase measurements. One of the next challenges, in particular in IGS, is computing the global VTEC maps, in real-time, which involves much less permanent receivers, increasing much more the di cult task of interpolating in a realistic way the electron content over large regions with few receivers (south hemisphere, oceans...). In this paper the actual status of the problem will be presented, from the perspective of gAGE/UPC, one of the four IGS Ionospheric Analysis Centers, participating in the Real-Time IGS Pilot Project.