Abstract
Radio occultation (RO) provides a cost-effective component of the overall sensor mix required to characterise the ionosphere over wide areas and in areas where it is not possible to deploy ground sensors. The paper describes the RO constellation that has been developed and deployed by Spire Global. This constellation and its associated ground infrastructure are now producing data that can be used to characterise the bulk ionosphere, lower ionosphere perturbations, and ionospheric scintillation.
Highlights
The ionosphere is a dynamic environment that varies over scale lengths ranging from metres to thousands of kilometres, and on scale times of fractions of seconds to decades
Commercial operators are flying constellations of Radio occultation (RO) satellites. One such operator is Spire Global, and this paper describes how Spire collects, processes, and uses ionospheric RO data
The daily number of calibrated total electron content (TEC) measurements collected via the precise orbit determination (POD) antenna has increased greatly from January 2018 to date (Fig. 9)
Summary
The ionosphere is a dynamic environment that varies over scale lengths ranging from metres to thousands of kilometres, and on scale times of fractions of seconds to decades. This paper is concerned with a particular space-based method known as Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) radio occultation (RO) (Jakowski et al, 2009). This is a form of atmospheric limb sounding that uses transmissions from GNSS satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO) and corresponding receivers on low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. Commercial operators are flying constellations of RO satellites One such operator is Spire Global (https://spire.com), and this paper describes how Spire collects, processes, and uses ionospheric RO data.
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