International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1992 / Town and Country Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / The ionosphere is a critical link in the earth's environment for space-based navigation, communications and surveillance systems. Signals sent down by the GPS satellites can provide an excellent means of studying the complex physical and chemical processes that take place there. GPS uses two frequencies to ascertain signal delays passing through the ionosphere. These are measured as errors and used to correct position solutions. Since this process is a means of measuring columns of Total Electron Content (TEC), multiple top-soundings from the GPS constellation could provide significant detail of the ionospheric pattern and possibly lead to enhancement of predictions for selectable areas and sites. This paper addresses transforming the GPS propagation delays (errors) into TEC and providing TEC contours on a PC-style workstation in real and integrated time and discusses a worldwide ionospheric network monitoring system.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(情報学) / 甲第19133号 / 情博第579号 / 新制||情||101(附属図書館) / 32084 / 京都大学大学院情報学研究科通信情報システム専攻 / (主査)教授 山本 衛, 教授 津田 敏隆, 教授 佐藤 亨 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Informatics / Kyoto University / DGAM

The low latitude tropical ionosphere has been investigated by various researchers using Global Positioning System (GPS). Presently for many civil aviation applications, the ionospheric modeling of the tropical region has gained importance, in particular for flight safety. Since ionosphere is dispersive in nature, dual frequency (L1 = 1575.42 MHz and L2 = 1227.60 MHz) GPS observations can be used to obtain Ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC). Since TEC varies with local time and geomagnetic latitude, an Ionospheric Modeling Technique using spatial linear approximation of vertical TEC over receiver station has been implemented following Sardon et al. The effects of all the systematic errors due to the satellite plus the receiver (SPR) instrumental biases can reach upto several nanoseconds. (1 TEC is 1016 electrons/m2, 1 ns = 2.86 TEC and 1 TEC = 0.16 m). Hence, to have an accurate estimation of ionospheric TEC, the instrumental biases must also be estimated. This thesis describes a heuristic adaptive Kalman Filtering scheme developed to estimate the TEC, the constants in the linearisation scheme, as well as the above total instrumental biases. The Kalman filter implementation is basically an optimization problem of minimizing the Cost Function J based on the difference between the model output and the measurement, called as the ‘innovation’, scaled by its covariance. In order to obtain the best possible results using the Kalman Filter approach, it is essential to provide appropriate values for the initial state, process and measurement noise covariances (P0, Q and R) respectively, which in general may not be known. Usually manual tuning of the filter parameter is carried out without using the above cost function J! The filter estimates can be highly sensitive to the above chosen statistics and thus these will have to be estimated carefully. Hence, we have utilized the Adaptive Kalman Filtering procedure of Myers and Tapley extended by Gemson and Ananthasayanam. The minimization is carried out by simultaneously estimating the above statistics and the unknown parameters, which include the TEC and the instrumental bias. In addition, A Constant Gain Kalman Filter approach using Genetic Algorithm (GA) has also been developed for the above requirement. It is observed that the steady state gains in KF and AKF approaches are in good match with the constant gains obtained from Genetic Algorithm. Using the above Adaptive Kalman Filtering technique and Constant Gain Kalman Filter approach, vertical TEC values and SPR biases have been estimated from the IGS receiver observations stationed at ISTRAC/ISRO, Bangalore, India. A diurnal TEC variation over Bangalore for a period of one year for 2003 and January 2004 is estimated and reported in this thesis. This approach has also been applied to study the behaviour of the ionosphere over low latitude IGS station at Fortaleza, Brazil data during the great magnetic storm on the 15th July 2000 and the results were found to be consistent with the results of Basu et al. In addition, Using Constant Kalman filter, the TEC enhancement over Indian region has been estimated for the October 2003 Ionospheric storm, and the results were found to be consistent with the reported results in the literature.

Após a desativação da disponibilidade seletiva, ocorrida em maio de 2000, a maior fonte de erro presente no sistema GPS passou a ser a refração ionosférica. Os seus efeitos provocam um avanço na fase de batimento da portadora e um atraso no código. Na região equatorial onde o Brasil está inserido, a refração ionosférica apresenta variações que decorrem de diversos fatores tais como: o ciclo solar, o movimento aparente do Sol, as estações do ano, o campo geomagnético, entre outras. Desta forma, a refração ionosférica é um fator limitante pois, degrada a determinação de posições, principalmente, se o usuário estiver utilizando um receptor de apenas uma freqüência. Para avaliar o efeito da refração ionosférica no Brasil, no período compreendido entre janeiro de 1997 a dezembro de 2001, foram utilizados dados coletados com receptores providos de duas freqüências e que integram a Rede Brasileira de Monitoramento Contínuo do Sistema GPS. Todos os dados foram preparados e inseridos em um programa científico de processamento das observáveis do sistema GPS. Devido à grande massa de dados foi necessário o desenvolvimento de um programa para verificar a integridade dos mesmos, converter as efemérides precisas e os dados para o formato de entrada do programa científico e preparar os arquivos de lote. Além das características apresentadas, este programa foi desenvolvido para automatizar o processo de cálculo do conteúdo total de elétrons. Ao final do processamento o programa exibe os parâmetros que representam a refração ionosférica ou seja, os valores calculados para o Conteúdo Total de Elétrons. Tais valores permitiram a criação de uma série histórica do comportamento da refração ionosférica abrangendo um intervalo de tempo que contempla um período em que o ciclo solar apresentava atividade mínima e um outro período em que o ciclo solar alcançou a máxima atividade. Estes dados indicam o comportamento da ionosfera para um período de cinco anos em uma das regiões do planeta que apresenta as maiores variações, comportamento este, que permitirá um melhor conhecimento da ionosfera e a melhoria ou desenvolvimento de modelos mais adequados. Foram gerados ainda, mapas da ionosfera que poderão auxiliar na melhoria da acurácia posicional. / Since the US president decided to turn off the selective availability (SA) one of the biggest error in the GPS system has been the ionosphere refraction. The refraction effect on GPS signals are: delay for the code and an advance for the phase. In the equatorial region, where Brazil is, the refraction presents the biggest variations that are caused by the solar cycle, the time of the day, the season, the geomagnetic field and many others phenomena. In this case, the ionosphere refraction is a limitation because it increases the degradation of the position, specially if the user is using a single frequency receiver. To evaluate the ionospheric effects in Brazil, between January 1997 and December 2001, data from the Brazilian Continuous GPS Monitoring Network were used, provided by double frequency GPS receivers. All data were prepared and used by a scientific software to process the GPS observations. The volume of data was so big that it was necessary to write a software to manage the data integrity, to transform the precise ephemeris and the observations to scientific program format and to create batch files. Also, the program was used to process the data and to compute the total electron content automatically. At the end of the process, the software shows the TEC parameters. These parameters were used to create a historical series of the ionosphere refraction in Brazil. This series represents a period of minimal solar cycle, 1997, and a maximum period of the solar cycle, 2000 / 2001 in one of the most active regions of the planet. This series will improve the knowledge on the ionosphere and will allow to improve models or create new ones. Ionospheric maps that can be used to improve the positional accuracy, were also generated.

Certain modern radio systems that rely on trans-ionospheric propagation require knowledge of changes in total electron content (TEC). Understanding rapidly changing, small amplitude perturbations in the ionosphere is important in order to quantify the accuracy of those systems. The main aim of this thesis is to collect statistical information on the perturbations and wave structures present in the ionosphere, for use in radio astronomy calibrations and future communication systems planning. To gain this information, TEC calculated from instruments measuring Faraday rotation on signals from geostationary satellites were used. These measurements were collected in Italy over the period of 19751982 and 1989-1991 at one minute intervals. An important class of TEC fluctuations is travelling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs). Here, temporal variations of mid-latitude slant TEC measurements during two solar cycle phases, i.e solar minimum in 1975-1976 and solar maximum in 1989-1990, were studied. Direct inspection of Savitzky-Golay filtered TEC data was used to extract the amplitudes of TIDs. Fourier analysis was used to extract the most dominant periods of the TIDs. Discrete Meyer wavelet together with the ANOVA method to determine TID variation changes in different parts of the day. Another class of TEC fluctuations presented in this thesis is diurnal double maxima (DDM) structures. These structures were observed during mid-day in our TEC measurements between 1975 and 1991. Verification of the DDM observations was sought by using foF2 and hmF2 measurements from an ionosonde in RomeA combination of ionospheric 3-D tomographic imaging and ray propagation theory has been used for the first time to demonstrate a method that can show how the new European radio array LOFAR will be affected by the ionosphere. This was achieved from a case study of a geomagnetic quiet day ionosphere by simulating how ray propagations, at different elevations and frequencies, will behave as they traverse the ionosphere. The important result from this study was that continuous monitoring of the telescope will be important during operation of the array if the errors introduced by the ionosphere are to be accurately corrected for. The study of TEC changes over different short time windows demonstrated that the ionosphere vastly varies over short time scales, thus making the monitory non trivial. Statistical analysis of the TEC changes will also be useful to the new European GPS augmentation system EGNOS as an indicator on whether the ionospheric measurements from the system are realistic.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been used for more than a decade for the accurate determination of position on the earth's surface, as well as navigation. The system consists of approximately thirty satellites, managed by the US Department of Defense, orbiting at an altitude of 20 200 kilometres, as well as thousands of stationary ground-based and mobile receivers. It has become apparent from numerous studies that the delay of GPS signals in the atmosphere can also be used to study the amosphere, particularly to determine the precipitable water vapour (PWV) content of the troposphere and the total electron content (TEC) of the ionosphere. This dissertation gives an overview of the mechanisms that contribute to the delay of radio signals between satellites and receivers. The dissertation then focuses on software developed at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory's (HartRAO's) Space Geodesy Programme to estimate tropospheric delays (from which PWV is calculated) in near real-time. In addition an application of this technique, namely the improvement of tropospheric delay models used to process satellite laser ranging (SLR) data, is investigated. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of opportunities for future work. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Physics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has been used for more than a decade for the accurate determination of position on the earth's surface, as well as navigation. The system consists of approximately thirty satellites, managed by the US Department of Defense, orbiting at an altitude of 20 200 kilometres, as well as thousands of stationary ground-based and mobile receivers. It has become apparent from numerous studies that the delay of GPS signals in the atmosphere can also be used to study the amosphere, particularly to determine the precipitable water vapour (PWV) content of the troposphere and the total electron content (TEC) of the ionosphere. This dissertation gives an overview of the mechanisms that contribute to the delay of radio signals between satellites and receivers. The dissertation then focuses on software developed at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory's (HartRAO's) Space Geodesy Programme to estimate tropospheric delays (from which PWV is calculated) in near real-time. In addition an application of this technique, namely the improvement of tropospheric delay models used to process satellite laser ranging (SLR) data, is investigated. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of opportunities for future work. / Thesis (M.Sc. (Physics))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004.

Após a desativação da disponibilidade seletiva, ocorrida em maio de 2000, a maior fonte de erro presente no sistema GPS passou a ser a refração ionosférica. Os seus efeitos provocam um avanço na fase de batimento da portadora e um atraso no código. Na região equatorial onde o Brasil está inserido, a refração ionosférica apresenta variações que decorrem de diversos fatores tais como: o ciclo solar, o movimento aparente do Sol, as estações do ano, o campo geomagnético, entre outras. Desta forma, a refração ionosférica é um fator limitante pois, degrada a determinação de posições, principalmente, se o usuário estiver utilizando um receptor de apenas uma freqüência. Para avaliar o efeito da refração ionosférica no Brasil, no período compreendido entre janeiro de 1997 a dezembro de 2001, foram utilizados dados coletados com receptores providos de duas freqüências e que integram a Rede Brasileira de Monitoramento Contínuo do Sistema GPS. Todos os dados foram preparados e inseridos em um programa científico de processamento das observáveis do sistema GPS. Devido à grande massa de dados foi necessário o desenvolvimento de um programa para verificar a integridade dos mesmos, converter as efemérides precisas e os dados para o formato de entrada do programa científico e preparar os arquivos de lote. Além das características apresentadas, este programa foi desenvolvido para automatizar o processo de cálculo do conteúdo total de elétrons. Ao final do processamento o programa exibe os parâmetros que representam a refração ionosférica ou seja, os valores calculados para o Conteúdo Total de Elétrons. Tais valores permitiram a criação de uma série histórica do comportamento da refração ionosférica abrangendo um intervalo de tempo que contempla um período em que o ciclo solar apresentava atividade mínima e um outro período em que o ciclo solar alcançou a máxima atividade. Estes dados indicam o comportamento da ionosfera para um período de cinco anos em uma das regiões do planeta que apresenta as maiores variações, comportamento este, que permitirá um melhor conhecimento da ionosfera e a melhoria ou desenvolvimento de modelos mais adequados. Foram gerados ainda, mapas da ionosfera que poderão auxiliar na melhoria da acurácia posicional. / Since the US president decided to turn off the selective availability (SA) one of the biggest error in the GPS system has been the ionosphere refraction. The refraction effect on GPS signals are: delay for the code and an advance for the phase. In the equatorial region, where Brazil is, the refraction presents the biggest variations that are caused by the solar cycle, the time of the day, the season, the geomagnetic field and many others phenomena. In this case, the ionosphere refraction is a limitation because it increases the degradation of the position, specially if the user is using a single frequency receiver. To evaluate the ionospheric effects in Brazil, between January 1997 and December 2001, data from the Brazilian Continuous GPS Monitoring Network were used, provided by double frequency GPS receivers. All data were prepared and used by a scientific software to process the GPS observations. The volume of data was so big that it was necessary to write a software to manage the data integrity, to transform the precise ephemeris and the observations to scientific program format and to create batch files. Also, the program was used to process the data and to compute the total electron content automatically. At the end of the process, the software shows the TEC parameters. These parameters were used to create a historical series of the ionosphere refraction in Brazil. This series represents a period of minimal solar cycle, 1997, and a maximum period of the solar cycle, 2000 / 2001 in one of the most active regions of the planet. This series will improve the knowledge on the ionosphere and will allow to improve models or create new ones. Ionospheric maps that can be used to improve the positional accuracy, were also generated.

En el Radio Observatorio de Jicamarca(ROJ) se ha desarrollado un sistema receptor digital de señales de radiofrecuencia provenientes de satélites de baja orbita. Este receptor terrestre calcula la variación del Contenido Total de Electrones(rTEC, del ingles relative Total Electron Content) en la ionosfera que tal y como su nombre lo diceel rTEC esta relacionado al contenido total de electrones o densidad de iones en la ionosfera. Este sistema tiene la capacidad de obtener señales transmitidas desde nano satélites y satélites en general que cuenten con un payload especifico. En un futuro el sistema receptor será capaz de captar las señales del transmisor del nanosatélite desarrollado por el ROJ. Las mediciones del rTEC obtenidas permitirán investigar la ionósfera ecuatorial y observar eventos y fenomenos de interés cuando se presenten irregularidades. En el presente trabajo de tesis, se hará una descripción del sistema y se explicará cómo el sistema receptor determina el rTEC usando la técnica llamada Differential Doppler. Así mismo se mostrarán los resultados de detección del rTEC utilizando las señales de radio frecuencias transmitidas por satélites que se encuentran operativos como COSMOS, CASSIOPE y DMSP-F15. Finalmente se mostraran las comparaciones de estos resultados con mediciones obtenidas por otro receptor del tipo analógico, las cuales presentan un alto índice de correlación. / A radio beacon receiver system is being developed at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory. This ground-based receiver will be used to obtain ionospheric total electron content (TEC) over the Peruvian region by detecting satellite radio beacon signals. This work is part of a project that involves the development of a CubeSat radio beacon for ionospheric measurements. The receiver station will have the capability to obtain differential phase measurements from current operational satellite radio beacons and from the new CubeSat radio beacon developed at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory. Due to the proximity to the magnetic equator, the obtained TEC measurements will allow the investigation of the equatorial ionosphere which plays a significant role in the generation of irregularities such as the equatorial spread F. Here, we present a description of the initial beacon receiver system design which is based on quadrifilar helix antennas, cavity filters, amplifiers and software-defined radio equipment. Initial simulations and tests of the different stages of the receiver system, including the algorithm for the data acquisition, will be shown. In addition, we will describe the design and tests of our cavity filters that show a better performance than commercial ones. Finally, we will explain how the receiver system determinates the TEC in the ionosphere using the Differential Doppler technique and how multi-ples scientific satellites constellations like COSMOS and COSMIC help us to do our measurements. This receiver system instrumentation will add to the set of groundbased instruments already operating at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory and will provide a valuable data set for ionospheric research. / Tesis

>Magister Scientiae - MSc / The development of regional ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) models has contributed to understanding the behavior of ionospheric parameters and the coupling of the ionosphere to space weather activities on both local and global scales. In the past several decades, the International Global Navigation Satellite Systems Service (GNSS) networks of dual frequency receiver data have been applied to develop global and regional models of ionospheric TEC. These models were mainly developed in the Northern Hemisphere where there are dense network of ground based GPS receivers for regional data coverage. Such efforts have been historically rare over the African region, and have only recently begun. This thesis reports the investigation of the effect of mid-latitude magnetic storms on TEC over South Africa for portions of Solar Cycles 23 and 24. The MAGIC package was used to estimate TEC over South Africa during Post Solar Maximum, Solar Minimum, and Post Solar Minimum periods. It is found that TEC is largely determined by the diurnal cycle of solar forcing and subsequent relaxation, but effects due to storms can be determined