Poster (Scientific congresses and symposiums)
Modelling the Ionosphere over Europe: Investigation of NeQuick Formulation
Bidaine, Benoît; Warnant, René
20085th European Space Weather Week
 

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Keywords :
ionosphere; model; NeQuick; topside; ionosonde; GIM; mid-latitudes; Europe; TEC; mitigation; positioning; GNSS; Galileo; single frequency; Géodésie et GNSS
Abstract :
[en] The modelling of the Total Electron Content (TEC) plays an important role in global satellite navigation systems (GNSS) accuracy, especially for single-frequency receivers, the most common ones constituting the mass market. For the latter and in the framework of Galileo, the NeQuick model has been chosen for correcting the ionospheric error contribution. It has been designed to calculate the electron density at a given point of the ionosphere according to the time conditions and the solar activity. This electron density can be integrated along the path from the receiver to the considered satellite to provide the TEC. For Galileo, a parameter Az (“effective ionisation level”) will be provided to the model as solar activity information and will be daily updated by the ground stations. Since NeQuick was chosen for Galileo purpose, a new version of the model has been released. It involves simplifications in the representation of the bottomside as well as a unique formula for a key parameter of the topside formulation previously defined through two equations, each one used for six months of the year. Hence we decided to investigate consecutive improvements and remaining weaknesses of this new formulation. To this extent, we take benefit of various ionosphere data from several European stations (Chilton in UK, Dourbes in Belgium, El Arenosillo and Roquetes in Spain, Pruhonice in Czech Republic) where ionosonde and GPS TEC data are available for different solar activity levels. These data allow us to study NeQuick representation of the ionosphere at mid-latitudes. We investigate the difference between GPS-derived vTEC and corresponding values from NeQuick for the latest years (between solar maximum in 2000 and minimum in 2007) in order to observe the temporal dependencies towards Universal Time, season and solar activity. We use ionosonde data to constrain the model so that we can concentrate on its formulation of the profile only. We especially highlight the improvements from the second version of NeQuick and show the critical importance of the topside formulation.
Disciplines :
Electrical & electronics engineering
Earth sciences & physical geography
Author, co-author :
Bidaine, Benoît ;  Université de Liège - ULiège / FNRS > Département de Géographie - Department of Geography > Unité de Géomatique - Geomatics Unit
Warnant, René  ;  Institut Royal Météorologique - IRM - Royal Meteorological Institute - RMI
Language :
English
Title :
Modelling the Ionosphere over Europe: Investigation of NeQuick Formulation
Publication date :
18 November 2008
Event name :
5th European Space Weather Week
Event organizer :
Observatoire Royal de Belgique - ORB - Royal Observatory of Belgium - ROB
Agence Spatiale Européenne - European Space Agency - ESA
Space Weather Working Team - SWWT
COST 724
COST 296
Event place :
Bruxelles, Belgium
Event date :
du 17 novembre 2008 au 21 novembre 2008
Audience :
International
Available on ORBi :
since 28 November 2008

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