We have been actively involved in the research and management activities of European Co-Operation in the Field of Scientific and Technical Research (EU COST) actions such as COST 238 Prediction and Retrospective Ionospheric Modeling over Europe (PRIME), COST 251 Improved Quality of Service in Ionospheric Telecommunication System Planning and Operation, COST 271 Effects of the Upper Atmosphere on Terrestrial and Earth-Space Communications, COST 296 Mitigation of Ionospheric Effects on Radio Systems (MIERS) and COST 724 Developing the Scientific Basis for Monitoring, Modeling and Predicting Space Weather. In this thesis High Frequency (3-30 MHz) (HF) radar system under ionospheric disturbances has been identified globally and some operational suggestions have been presented. The use of HF radar system is considered from the identification of ionospheric propagation medium point of view. Doppler velocity is considered as the characteristic parameter of the propagation medium. ap index is chosen as the parameter for disturbance characterization due to geomagnetic storms in the ionosphere. The main difficulty is the scarcity of data, which is rare and confidential. Therefore semi-synthetic data are generated. Dependence of Doppler velocity and group range of the echo signal on ap index is examined and some details of dependence are studied and demonstrated. Thus, effects of space weather on the ionosphere and as a result on HF radar wave propagation are displayed. These results are examples of system identification. This can be used in communication system planning and operation.

Submitted by Mayara Cobacho Ortega null (mayarac.ortega@gmail.com) on 2016-10-03T14:46:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação_Mestrado_Mayara_Caldeira.pdf: 4776033 bytes, checksum: ecc26c1af2e4e6f23b65a5eecbd9ed03 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Paula Grisoto (grisotoana@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2016-10-04T18:11:06Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 caldeira_mco_me_prud.pdf: 4776033 bytes, checksum: ecc26c1af2e4e6f23b65a5eecbd9ed03 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-04T18:11:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 caldeira_mco_me_prud.pdf: 4776033 bytes, checksum: ecc26c1af2e4e6f23b65a5eecbd9ed03 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-02-11 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Visando usufruir do potencial dos sistemas de posicionamento global existentes, novos métodos de posicionamento têm surgido e outros vêm sendo aprimorados. Uma grande tendência nos últimos anos tem sido o uso de redes de estações GNSS de referência. Mas, tanto no uso de redes como nos demais métodos, um fator importante para melhorar a qualidade do posicionamento está relacionado com a modelagem atmosférica. Especial atenção deve ser dada aos erros que ocorrem devido à ionosfera, pois ela se tornou a principal fonte de erro no posicionamento GNSS, após desativação da técnica SA. Este erro é diretamente proporcional ao Conteúdo Total de Elétrons (TEC) e inversamente proporcional ao quadrado da frequência do sinal. O TEC e, consequentemente, o erro ionosférico variam no tempo e no espaço, e sofrem diversas influências, como: ciclo solar, época do ano, hora local, localização geográfica, atividade geomagnética, entre outros. Atualmente, o os erros proporcionados pela ionosfera podem ter seus efeitos minimizados a partir de arquivos IONEX ou por meio de modelagem ionosférica. Portanto, nesta pesquisa, foram utilizados dados das estações da RBMC em diferentes regiões do Brasil no período de baixa e alta densidade de elétrons do pico solar 24 para avaliar o desempenho dos mapas ionosféricos, no posicionamento baseado em redes, disponibilizados por diversos centros (CODE, ESA, JPL, UPC e IGS), bem como os fornecidos pelo projeto MIMOSA, e também os modelos de Grade (AGUIAR, 2010) e estimativa de TEC. Para tal fim, foi adotado um sistema computacional desenvolvido na FCT/UNESP, denominado VRS-Unesp, que emprega o conceito de Estação Virtual. De acordo com os resultados obtidos, nota-se que não há um único mapa fornecido pelos centros de análise do IGS que melhor se enquadra a realidade brasileira, além disso, o desempenho do mapa depende das condições ionosféricas e, principalmente, da localização da estação. Além disso, verificou-se que a acurácia obtida pelo IONEX do projeto MIMOSA, pelo modelo de grade e de Estimativa do TEC que utilizam dados regionais e possuem maior resolução espacial e temporal, foram os que apresentaram os melhores resultados. Por fim foi avaliada a correlação entre a acurácia do posicionamento por ponto e o índice de cintilação S4, já que a ionosfera pode não apenas degradar a acurácia do posicionamento GNSS como reduzir sua disponibilidade, pois existe uma alta dependência entre perdas do sinal e irregularidades ionosféricas. Como resultado, considerando a análise de espaço-frequência em relação ao tempo pelo método coerência wavelets para avaliação da correlação da série, nota-se uma correlação no périodo do equinócio superior a 70%. / In order to take advantage from global positioning systems, new positioning methods have emerged and others have been improved. An important tendency in recent years has been the use of GNSS reference stations networks. But, using networks or other positioning methods an important factor to improve the positioning quality is related to atmospheric modeling. Special attention should be given to errors that occur due to ionosphere, it became the largest error source in GNSS positioning after disabling SA technique. Ionosphere error depends on signal frequency and Total Electron Content (TEC) in the ionospheric layer. TEC and consequently the ionospheric error varies regularly in time and space and they are affected by different sources like: sunspot number (solar cycle), season, local time, geographic position, geomagnetic activity, and others. Currently, the errors provided by the ionosphere can be minimized using IONEX files or models. Therefore, in this research, the RBMC stations data were used in different regions of Brazil in the period of low and high electron density of the cycle solar 24 to evaluate the performance of the ionospheric maps, in network-based positioning, available from several centers, as CODE , ESA, JPL, UPC and IGS, as well as those provided by the MIMOSA project, and also the Grade Models (AGUIAR, 2010) and TEC Estimates. For this, a computer system developed in FCT / UNESP has been adopted, RSV-Unesp that uses the concept of Virtual Station. According to the results, we note that there is not single map of IGS analysis centers that best fits the Brazilian reality, moreover, the map performance depends on the ionospheric conditions and, primarily, the station location. Moreover, it was found that the accuracy obtained by IONEX the MIMOSA project, the Grade Model and TEC estimation using regional data and have higher spatial and temporal resolution, showed the best results. Finally we evaluated the correlation between the accuracy of point positioning and scintillation index S4, since the ionosphere can not only degrade the accuracy of GNSS positioning as well as reduce its availability, because there is a high dependency between signal loss and ionospheric irregularities. As result, considering the space-frequency analysis with respect to time by the wavelet coherence method for evaluation of the correlation of the series, there is a correlation in the period of higher equinox to 70%. / FAPESP: 2014/03858-9

Electromagnetic waves can be used to transmit information over long distances and are therefore often employed for communication purposes. The electromagnetic waves are reflected off material objects on their paths and interact with the medium through which they propagate. For instance, the plasma in the ionosphere can refract and even reflect radio waves propagating through it. By increasing the power of radio waves injected into the ionosphere, the waves start to modify the plasma, resulting in the generation of a wide range of nonlinear processes, including turbulence, in particular near the reflection region. By systematically varying the injected radio waves in terms of frequency, power, polarisation, duty cycle, inclination, etc. the ionosphere can be used as an outdoor laboratory for investigating fundamental properties of the near-Earth space environment as well as of plasma turbulence. In such ionospheric modification experiments, it has been discovered that the irradiation of the ionosphere by powerful radio waves leads to the formation of plasma density structures and to the emission of secondary electromagnetic radiation, a phenomenon known as stimulated electromagnetic emission. These processes are highly repeatable and have enabled systematic investigations of the nonlinear properties of the ionospheric plasma. In this thesis we investigate features of the plasma density structures and the secondary electromagnetic radiation. In a theoretical study we analyse a certain aspect of the formation of the plasma structures. The transient dynamics of the secondary radiation is investigated experimentally in a series of papers, focussing on the initial stage as well as on the decay. In one of the papers we use the transient dynamics of the secondary radiation to reveal the intimate relation between certain features of the radiation and structures of certain scales. Further, we present measurements of unprecedentedly strong secondary radiation, attributed to stimulated Brillouin scattering, and report measurements of the secondary radiation using a novel technique imposed on the transmitted radio waves.

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.

The ionosphere is an important factor in high frequency (HF) radio propagation providing an opportunity to study ionospheric variability as well as the space weather conditions under which HF communication can take place. This thesis presents the validation of HF propagation conditions for the Ionospheric Communication Enhanced Profile Analysis and Circuit (ICEPAC) and Advanced Stand Alone Prediction System (ASAPS) models over Africa by comparing predictions with the measured data obtained from the International Beacon Project (IBP). Since these models were not developed using information on the African region, a more accurate HF propagation prediction tool is required. Two IBP transmitter stations are considered, Ruaraka, Kenya (1.24°S, 36.88°E) and Pretoria, South Africa (25.45°S, 28.10°E) with one beacon receiver station located in Hermanus, South Africa (34.27°S, 19.l2°E). The potential of these models in terms of HF propagation conditions is illustrated. An attempt to draw conclusions for future improvement of the models is also presented. Results show a low prediction accuracy for both ICEPAC and ASAPS models, although ICEPAC provided more accurate predictions for daily HF propagation conditions. This thesis suggests that the development of a new HF propagation prediction tool for the African region or the modification of one of the existing models to accommodate the African region, taking into account the importance of the African ionospheric region, should be considered as an option to ensure more accurate HF Propagation predictions over this region.

Ionospheric storms are an extreme form of space weather phenomena which affect space- and ground-based technological systems. Extreme solar activity may give rise to Coronal Mass Ejections (CME) and solar flares that may result in ionospheric storms. This thesis reports on a statistical analysis of the ionospheric response over the ionosonde stations Grahamstown (33.3◦S, 26.5◦E) and Madimbo (22.4◦S,30.9◦E), South Africa, during geomagnetic storm conditions which occurred during the period 1996 - 2011. Total Electron Content (TEC) derived from Global Positioning System (GPS) data by a dual Frequency receiver and an ionosonde at Grahamstown, was analysed for the storms that occurred during the period 2006 - 2011. A comprehensive analysis of the critical frequency of the F2 layer (foF2) and TEC was done. To identify the geomagnetically disturbed conditions the Disturbance storm time (Dst) index with a storm criteria of Dst ≤ −50 nT was used. The ionospheric disturbances were categorized into three responses, namely single disturbance, double disturbance and not significant (NS) ionospheric storms. Single disturbance ionospheric storms refer to positive (P) and negative (N) ionospheric storms observed separately, while double disturbance storms refer to negative and positive ionospheric storms observed during the same storm period. The statistics show the impact of geomagnetic storms on the ionosphere and indicate that negative ionospheric effects follow the solar cycle. In general, only a few ionospheric storms (0.11%) were observed during solar minimum. Positive ionospheric storms occurred most frequently (47.54%) during the declining phase of solar cycle 23. Seasonally, negative ionospheric storms occurred mostly during the summer (63.24%), while positive ionospheric storms occurred frequently during the winter (53.62%). An important finding is that only negative ionospheric storms were observed during great geomagnetic storm activity (Dst ≤ −350 nT). For periods when both ionosonde and GPS was available, the two data sets indicated similar ionospheric responses. Hence, GPS data can be used to effectively identify the ionospheric response in the absence of ionosonde data.

Thesis (D.Sc.)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Science, 1959.

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.

Orientador : Paulo de Oliveira Camargo / Resumo: Atualmente, a maior fonte de erro sistemático no posicionamento com receptores GPS de uma freqüência é devido à refração ionosférica. O erro associado à refração ionosférica depende do conteúdo total de elétrons (TEC) na camada ionosférica, que por sua vez, é influenciado por diversas variáveis, tais como: ciclo solar, época do ano, hora do dia, localização geográfica e atividade geomagnética, e é difícil de ser corrigido. Os receptores GPS de dupla freqüência permitem efetuar correções do efeito da refração ionosférica, devido ao fato da mesma ser dependente da freqüência do sinal. Porém, receptores GPS de dupla freqüência são equipamentos caros, fazendo com que os de uma freqüência sejam amplamente empregados no posicionamento com GPS. As mensagens de navegação trazem informações que permitem efetuar correções da ionosfera para receptores GPS de uma freqüência, utilizando o modelo de Klobuchar. Porém vários estudos realizados mostraram que o modelo de Klobuchar pode remover apenas algo em torno de 50-60% do efeito total. Desta maneira, é necessário dispor de uma estratégia mais efetiva de eliminar os efeitos da ionosfera, a qual tem sido investigada a partir do uso de modelos regionais para a ionosfera. No Brasil, tem-se o modelo regional da ionosfera (Mod_Ion), desenvolvido na FCT/UNESP, que utiliza dados GPS da Rede Brasileira de Monitoramento Contínuo (RBMC). Neste modelo, a ionosfera é representada analiticamente pela série de Fourier. Nesta pesquisa, outras funções de modelagem e de mapeamento da ionosfera foram implementadas no Mod_Ion, visando melhorar a eficiência do modelo para posicionamento com receptores de uma freqüência. Os resultados dos experimentos do posicionamento por ponto mostraram que as funções série de Fourier, de Taylor e a polinomial foram as mais eficazes na correção do efeito sistemático...(Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Nowadays, one of the main drawbacks of the GPS accuracy for L1 users is the ionospheric refraction, which affects, mainly, the point positioning. The error associated with the ionospheric refraction depends on the Total Electron Content (TEC) in the ionospheric layer, that is influenced by several variables, including the solar cycle, the season, the local time, the geographical location of the receiver and the Earth's magnetic field. The broadcast ephemeris contains information for computing the group delay, using the broadcast model. The literatures report that the model correct 50 to 60% of the total effect of ionospheric refraction. Therefore, it is necessary a more effective strategy of eliminating the effects of the ionosphere. Some techniques and models have been developed to estimate these effects using data collected with double frequency GPS receivers. In Brazil, a regional model of the ionosphere (Mod_Ion) was developed in FCT/UNESP, which makes use of GPS data collected at the active stations of RBMC (Brazilian Network for Continuous Monitoring of GPS satellites) In this model, the ionosphere is represented analytically by a Fourier series type. In this research, other modelling and mapping functions of the ionosphere were implemented in Mod_Ion, seeking to improve the efficiency of the model for positioning with L1 receivers. The results of the experiments showed that the functions: Fourier series, Taylor series and the polynomial, were the most effective in the correction of the systematic effect due to the ionosphere, providing a improvement in the acuracy better than 79,5%, with values of discrepancies in the resultant of the cartesian coordinates better than 3 m, and the largest influence concentrates on the height. / Mestre

An important property of the Earth's atmosphere is its ability to support wave motions, and indeed, waves exist throughout the Earth's atmosphere at all times and all locations. What is the importance of these waves? Imagine standing on the beach as water waves come crashing into you. In this case, the waves transport energy and momentum to you, knocking you off balance. Similarly, waves in the atmosphere crash, known as breaking, but what do they crash into? They crash into the atmosphere knocking the atmosphere off balance in terms of the winds and temperatures. Although the Earth's atmosphere is full of waves, they cannot be observed directly; however, their effects on the atmosphere can be observed. Waves can be detected in the winds and temperatures, as mentioned above, but also in pressure and density. In this dissertation, three different studies of waves, known as gravity waves, were performed at three different locations. For these studies, we investigate the size of the waves and in which direction they move. Using specialized cameras, gravity waves were observed in the middle atmosphere (50-70 miles up) over Alaska (for three winter times) and Norway (for one winter time). A third study investigated gravity waves at a much higher altitude (70 miles on up) using radar data from Alaska (for three years). These studies have provided important new information on these waves and how they move through the atmosphere. This in turn helps to understand in which direction these waves are crashing into the atmosphere and therefore, which direction the energy and momentum are going. Studies such as these help to better forecast weather and climate.