A Reconstruction Method for Ionospheric foF2 Spatial Mapping over Australia

Abstract

To improve the accuracy of predicting the ionospheric critical frequency of the F2 layer (foF2), a reconstruction method for the spatial map of the ionospheric foF2 based on modified geomagnetic dip coordinates is proposed. Based on the strong correlation between the ionospheric foF2 and geomagnetic coordinates, the variation function of ionospheric distance is built. In the end, the spatial map of the ionospheric foF2 is predicted by solving the Kriging equation. The results show that the regional characteristics of the ionospheric foF2 analyzed by the proposed method are consistent with the observations. Compared with the reconstructed value of foF2 using traditional geographic coordinates, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) in high solar activity years decreased by 0.43 MHz, and the relative RMSE decreased by 5.48%; The RMSE decreased by 0.35 MHz during low solar activity which is 5.99% lower to relative RMSE. The research results provide support for high-frequency communication frequency selection.

A New Determining Method for Ionospheric F2-Region Peak Electron Density Height

“…The ionosphere, a variable medium affecting HF communication [4], exhibits time-varying dispersion characteristics. The ionosphere, which includes the thermosphere, part of the mesosphere, and the exosphere, is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere surrounding the earth, extending from 60 km to more than 1000 km [5]. The primary plasma sources are the photoionization of neutral molecules in soft X-ray radiation and the photoionization of neutral molecules in solar EVU [6].…”