Introduction of TROPS ionospheric TEC products for FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 mission

Abstract

Six low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites were launched on June 25th, 2019 for a radio occultation (RO) mission for the FORMOSAT-7/COSMIC-2 (F7/C2) program. The GPS and GLONASS RO signals received by these F7/C2 satellites can be used to retrieve atmospheric and ionospheric parameter profiles for atmospheric and ionospheric research. In order to process the received RO signal, the processing system named Taiwan Radio Occultation Processing System (TROPS) is built. TROPS is developed by National Space Organization, Taiwan Analysis Center for COSMIC, and GPS Science and Application Research Center in Taiwan. The ionospheric products of TROPS are electron density profile, ionospheric scintillation index (S4 index), and absolute total electron content (TEC). S4 index has been calculated on board the satellites and other two products are retrieved by TROPS after the observation data downlink to ground. TEC is the linear integration of electron density along the signal propagation path. The electron density profile is retrieved from the relative TEC when the elevation angle of GNSS satellite is negative from F7/C2 satellite. The absolute TEC is the TEC from GNSS satellite to F7/C2 satellite. The difference between absolute and relative TEC is the TEC with/without differential code bias (DCB) correction. Currently, the data for the electron density profile and absolute TEC are provided by TROPS. Users can obtain the products freely from the internet. In this study, the retrieval method and the preliminary F7/C2 ionospheric TEC products retrieved by TROPS are presented in detail.