The Use of GPS/MET Data for Ionospheric Studies

Abstract : The primary scientific objective of this research is to develop GPS radio occultation inversion techniques that compute accurate ionospheric electron density profiles (even in the presence of horizontal inhomogeneities), and thus provide a key parameter of the local ionospheric state. Another important objective is to estimate the profiling accuracy of each developed technique. A final objective is to investigate the feasibility of locating regions of scintillation in the ionosphere with space-based GPS data. It is clear that developing fast and efficient algorithms is an underlying objective here and will be necessary for performing accurate space weather prediction in the future.