Real time global ionospheric maps: a low latency alternative to traditional GIMs

Abstract

Since the late nineties different entities have been generating and distributing Global Ionospheric Maps (GIMs). In this time, multiple new application have arisen from the determination of electron content distribution and time evolution at global scale: from the more direct correction used by GNSS users up to measurement of solar EUV flux rate during solar flares, at global scale (Singh et al 2015). Moreover specific applications requiring precise real-time positioning and potential detection of tsunamis at regional and continental scales (Galvan et al 2011) are also active fields of work. However, the latency to access the GNSS data and the computational time was too high to make real time GIMs. Nowadays thanks to the internet, which allows having real time access to permanent GNSS receiver’s raw data, the maturity of the ionospheric modelling techniques and the computational power of modern computers we are able to compute different real-time ionospheric products. In this poster we compare six different products: three real-time from CAS (aoeg), CNES (cnsg) and UPC (urtg); one near real time from TUM (dgfi) and two traditional GIMs for reference, from UPC (uqrg) and IGS (igs).