Reconstruction of the vertical electron density profile based on vertical TEC using the simulated annealing algorithm

Abstract This paper presents a new method to reconstruct the vertical electron density profile based on vertical Total Electron Content (TEC) using the simulated annealing algorithm. The present technique used the Quasi-parabolic segments (QPS) to model the bottomside ionosphere. The initial parameters of the ionosphere model were determined from both International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) (Bilitza et al., 2014) and vertical TEC (vTEC). Then, the simulated annealing algorithm was used to search the best-fit parameters of the ionosphere model by comparing with the GPS-TEC. The performance and robust of this technique were verified by ionosonde data. The critical frequency (foF2) and peak height (hmF2) of the F2 layer obtained from ionograms recorded at different locations and on different days were compared with those calculated by the proposed method. The analysis of results shows that the present method is inspiring for obtaining foF2 from vTEC. However, the accuracy of hmF2 needs to be improved in the future work.

[1]  Kai Liu,et al.  A Hybrid Reconstruction Algorithm for 3-D Ionospheric Tomography , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.

[2]  Jonathan J. Makela,et al.  Combined Ionospheric Campaign 1: Ionospheric tomography and GPS total electron count (TEC) depletions , 2000 .

[3]  J. Klobuchar,et al.  Application of computerized tomography to the investigation of ionospheric structures , 1990 .

[4]  Mark Hausman,et al.  Real‐time reconstruction of the three‐dimensional ionosphere using data from a network of GPS receivers , 2006 .

[5]  H. Soicher,et al.  Improved short‐term predictions of ƒ0F2 using GPS time delay measurements , 1996 .

[6]  C. D. Gelatt,et al.  Optimization by Simulated Annealing , 1983, Science.

[7]  S. E. Pryse,et al.  A preliminary experimental test of ionospheric tomography , 1992 .

[8]  Cathryn N. Mitchell,et al.  Determination of the vertical electron-density profile in ionospheric tomography: experimental results , 1997 .

[9]  Anna Belehaki,et al.  Investigation of the relative bottomside/topside contribution to the total electron content estimates , 2002 .

[10]  Shoichiro Fukao,et al.  High resolution mapping of TEC perturbations with the GSI GPS Network over Japan , 1998 .

[11]  E. Essex,et al.  Ionospheric total electron content and slab thickness determined in Australia , 1997 .

[12]  Alain Bourdillon,et al.  Inversion of Backscatter Ionograms Optimization by using Simulated Annealing and Genetic Algorithms , 2008, IGARSS 2008 - 2008 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[13]  Bodo W. Reinisch,et al.  Vertical electron content from ionograms in real time , 2001 .

[14]  Jaume Sanz,et al.  Global observation of the ionospheric electronic response to solar events using ground and LEO GPS data , 1998 .

[15]  Giulio Ruffini,et al.  Improving the vertical resolution of ionospheric tomography with GPS Occultations , 1997 .

[16]  Hua Lee,et al.  Resolution analysis of tomographic reconstruction of electron density profiles in the Ionosphere , 1990, Int. J. Imaging Syst. Technol..

[17]  Lee-Anne McKinnell,et al.  Estimation of foF2 from GPS TEC over the South African region , 2014 .

[18]  Vladimir Truhlik,et al.  The International Reference Ionosphere 2012 – a model of international collaboration , 2014 .

[19]  Jeffrey Robert Austen,et al.  Ionospheric imaging using computerized tomography , 1988 .

[20]  Sandro M. Radicella,et al.  A model assisted ionospheric electron density reconstruction method based on vertical TEC data ingestion , 2005 .

[21]  Cathryn N. Mitchell,et al.  Ionospheric electron concentration imaging using GPS over the USA during the storm of July 2000 , 2004 .

[22]  Andrzej Krankowski,et al.  Mapping of foF2 over Europe based on GPS-derived TEC data , 2007 .

[23]  Francesco Berrilli,et al.  The relativistic solar particle event of May 17th, 2012 observed on board the International Space Station , 2014 .

[24]  James A. Secan,et al.  Application of stochastic inverse theory to ionospheric tomography , 1992 .

[25]  Peng Zhu,et al.  Improvement of automatic scaling of vertical incidence ionograms by simulated annealing , 2015 .

[26]  F. Arıkan,et al.  Estimation of $hmF2$ and $foF2$ Communication Parameters of Ionosphere $F2$ -Layer Using GPS Data and IRI-Plas Model , 2013 .

[27]  Takashi Maruyama,et al.  Three‐dimensional ionospheric tomography using observation data of GPS ground receivers and ionosonde by neural network , 2005 .

[28]  Volker Wilken,et al.  Reconstruction of F2 layer peak electron density based on operational vertical total electron content maps , 2013 .

[29]  Thomas A. Croft,et al.  Exact Ray Calculations in a Quasi-Parabolic Ionosphere With No Magnetic Field , 1968 .

[30]  Peter. Dyson,et al.  A model of the vertical distribution of the electron concentration in the ionosphere and its application to oblique propagation studies , 1988 .

[31]  Zhao Zheng.  Inversion of HF sweep-frequency backscatter ionograms , 2011 .

[32]  L. McKinnell,et al.  Ionospheric tomography over South Africa: Comparison of MIDAS and ionosondes measurements , 2016 .

[33]  Mamoru Yamamoto,et al.  Three‐dimensional GPS ionospheric tomography over Japan using constrained least squares , 2014 .