Ionosphere monitoring in South East Asia: Activities in GINESTRA and ERICA projects

GINESTRA and ERICA are two projects funded in the framework of the ALCANTARA Initiative of the European Space Agency. GINESTRA is a survey which aims to explore the capabilities of ionosphere monitoring in South East Asia to identify both institutions involved in this field and existing monitoring facilities. ERICA exploits the GINESTRA outcomes and aims to characterize the ionospheric variability of the Equatorial Ionospheric Anomaly in the region, in particular the variation of the plasma electron density in the southern and northern crests of the anomaly and over the dip equator identified by the Equatorial Ionospheric Trough. To achieve this goal, an ad hoc measurements campaign is conducted with ground-based instruments located in the footprints of the Equatorial Ionospheric Anomaly and of the Equatorial Ionospheric Trough in Vietnam and Indonesia. The paper presents the outcomes of GINESTRA and highlights some preliminary results of the data analysis conducted so far in the framework of ERICA.