The Application of GPS TEC Data For Modeling Range And Elevation Corrections For Radar Systems

Lincoln D. Brown, Robert E. Daniell Jr., Gregory Bishop, Andrew Mazzella, George H. Milhnan

Abstract:	The Ionospheric Error Correction Model (IECM) was developed for real-time ionospheric range and elevation error correction calculations at the ARPA Long Range Tracking and Instrumentation Radar (ALTAIR) located at the Kwajalein Field Site in the Marshall Islands. TEC measurements from a dual-frequency GPS receiver located at the site are used to update the ionospheric model’s theoretical climatology. The ionospheric climatology is based on the Parameterized Ionospheric Model (PIM), which is itself based on theoretical ionospheric models, but has been translated into a site- specific azimuth-elevation-range grid. Although IECM contains site-specific climatology, it was designed to be recontigurable with relatively little effort. Since its original development, evaluation versions of IECM have been produced for two other radar sites: the PAVE PAWS radar on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and the COBRA DANE radar at Shemya, Alaska. The application of IECM in the PAVE PAWS environment has been shown to significantly reduce the scatter in the range error (by a factor of 3), an important consequence for radar operations. We are just now beginning to analyze results for the COBRA DANE application. In this paper, we describe IECM and present comparisons of IECM predictions with data from the PAVE PAWS and COBRA DANE sites.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1997) June 30 - 2, 1997 Albuquerque, NM
Pages:	91 - 99
Cite this article:	Brown, Lincoln D., Daniell, Robert E., Jr., Bishop, Gregory, Mazzella, Andrew, Milhnan, George H., "The Application of GPS TEC Data For Modeling Range And Elevation Corrections For Radar Systems," Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1997), Albuquerque, NM, June 1997, pp. 91-99.
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