Simulation study on slant-to-vertical deviation in two dimensional TEC mapping over the ionosphere equatorial anomaly

Abstract

With the rapid increase of GPS/GNSS receivers being deployed and operated in China, real-time GPS data from nearly a thousand sites are available at the National Center for Space Weather, China Meteorology Administration. However, it is challenging to generate a high-quality regional total electron content (TEC) map with the traditional two-dimensional (2-D) retrieval scheme because a large horizontal gradient has been reported over east–south Asia due to the northern equatorial ionization anomaly. We developed an Ionosphere Data Assimilation Analysis System (IDAAS), which is described in this study, using an International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model as the background and applying a Kalman filter for updated observations. The IDAAS can reconstruct a three-dimensional ionosphere with the GPS slant TEC. The inverse slant TEC correlates well with observations both for GPS sites involved in the reconstruction and sites that are not involved. Based on the IDAAS, simulations were performed to investigate the deviation relative to the slant-to-vertical conversion (STV). The results indicate that the relative deviation induced by slant-to-vertical conversion may be significant in certain instances, and the deviation varies from 0% to 40% when the elevation decreases from 90° to 15°, while the relative IDAAS deviation is much smaller and varies from −5% to 15% without an elevation dependence. Compared with ‘true TEC’ map derived from the model, there is large difference in STV TEC map but no obvious discrepancy in IDAAS map. Generally, the IDAAS TEC map is much closer to the “true TEC” than is STV TEC map is.It is suggested that three-dimensional inversion technique is necessary for GPS observations of low elevation at an equatorial anomaly region, wherein the high horizontal electron density gradient may produce significant slant-to-vertical deviations using the two-dimensional STV inversion method.