An Improved Ionospheric Modeling Technique Using GPS and Empirical-Orthogonal-Function Fits

Wei Zhang, Attila Komjathy, Simon Banville, Hyunho Rho, Richard B. Langley

Abstract:	Ionospheric models have become useful tools for both improving the accuracies of positioning and navigation and scientific research. The data-driven modelling techniques have been proven to be good candidates for real-time applications due to their ease of use and potentially higher accuracy compared to broadcast models. In this paper, we propose to employ ionospheric climatology to replace widely-used arbitrary functions to more accurately describe variabilities of the ionosphere. We have found that modelling precision has improved by 13.9% using the newly proposed method compared to the spherical harmonic function (SHF) modelling method. Other benefits of the modelling method are also demonstrated in the paper by comparing independent GPS observations that were not included in the original solution. In addition, we validated our new modelling results using independent data sources.
Published in:	Proceedings of the ION 2015 Pacific PNT Meeting April 20 - 23, 2015 Marriott Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa Honolulu, Hawaii
Pages:	63 - 70
Cite this article:	Zhang, Wei, Komjathy, Attila, Banville, Simon, Rho, Hyunho, Langley, Richard B., "An Improved Ionospheric Modeling Technique Using GPS and Empirical-Orthogonal-Function Fits," Proceedings of the ION 2015 Pacific PNT Meeting, Honolulu, Hawaii, April 2015, pp. 63-70.
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