Monitoring of Small‐Scale Ionospheric Irregularity Using Local GPS Network

Abstract

AbstractBased on the high spatio‐temporal resolution GPS dual‐frequency data collected by the Shanghai Comprehensive Application GPS Network, an ionospheric irregularity and its process of arising and disappearing were monitored and studied. First, Kalman filter is used to improve the accuracy of ΔP2P1, and the hardware delay of GPS System is estimated by the Least Square method. Then according to the Single Layer Model (SLM) of the ionosphere and the altitude of the SLM shell, the accurate positions of the GPS satellites and receivers, and the dual‐frequency observations, the location of the ionosphere pierce points (IPPs) and their TEC are obtained, then the TEC Contour Maps are derived using the interpolating technique. The TEC variations with time reflected by these maps indicate that due to the turbulence flow of the atmosphere, an ionospheric irregularity located at (38°N, 118°E), whose scale is about 50km and the existence time 5 minutes, came to being at 2003‐09‐08‐01:40 UTC. It diffused northeastward, which was caused by the upper air winds and geomagnetic field. After analysis with the diffusion equation under 1976 U. S. Standard Atmosphere, we find that the irregularity appeared at the height of 350km above the ground.