GPS Total Electron Content (TEC) Prediction at Ionosphere Layer over the Equatorial Region

Abstract

Space weather is a fairly new field in science today and has very interesting effects on humans, environment and technology in general. Scientists are now studying space weather with a wide range of tools to try to learn more about the physical and chemical processes taking place in the upper atmosphere and beyond. One of these tools is Global Positioning System (GPS). GPS is currently one of the most popular global satellite positioning systems due to global availability of signal as well as performance. GPS is a satellite-based navigation radio system which is used to verify the position and time in space and on the Earth. GPS nowadays allows to measure positions in real time with an accuracy of few centimetres (Warnant et al., 2007). The advent of GPS has led to technical revolutions in navigation as well as in fields related to surveying. The GPS system - an all-weather satellite-based radio navigation system - can provide users on a world-wide basis with navigation, positioning, and time information which is not possible with conventional navigation and surveying methods. Apart from geodesy and geophysical interest, GPS has great importance in scientific applications. The GPS satellites that are orbiting the Earth, at altitudes of about 20,200 km, transmit signals that propagate through the ionosphere that exists at about 60 –1500 km above the Earth’s surface. The signals from the GPS satellites travel through the ionosphere on their way to receivers on the Earth’s surface. The free electrons populating this region of the atmosphere affect the propagation of the signals, changing their velocity and direction of travel as shown at figure 1. Due to the inhomogeneity of the propagation medium in the ionosphere, the GPS signal does not travel along a perfectly straight line (Ioannides & Strangeways, 2000). The effects of the ionosphere can cause range-rate errors for users of the GPS satellites who require high accuracy measurements (Bradford & Spilker, 1996). Ionosphere is highly variable in space and time (sunspot cycle, seasonal, and diurnal), with geographical location (polar, aurora zones, mid-latitudes and equatorial regions), and with certain solar-related ionospheric disturbances. Ionosphere research attracts significant attention from the GPS community because ionosphere range delay on GPS signals is a major error source in GPS positioning and navigation. The ionosphere has practical importance in GPS applications because it influences the transionospheric radio wave