Monitoring Sporadic E Layer Using GNSS Radio Occultation Observed from Spire's Cubesat Constellation
Abstract
Sporadic E (Es) layers are high-density, narrow-altitude layers of enhanced electron density in the ionosphere's E region. Contrary to what the name would suggest, Es is a relatively frequently occurring phenomenon and its climatology has been well characterised through ionosonde studies. However, such studies do not provide a full understanding of the vertical structure of the Es layers, and cannot determine whether Es will be observed at any particular time/location. Such information is of great interest to many terrestrial applications, such as radio communications, global navigation satellite system (GNSS) users, and space weather forecasts. Recently, the coupling between Es and atmospheric gravity waves (AGW) has also seen increased research attention.
Spire operates a large constellation of 3U cubesats which carry a radio occultation (RO) capable GNSS receiver. For ionospheric studies the satellites can measure Total Electron Content (TEC) data in both zenith looking and RO geometries. Furthermore, the high rate (50Hz) phase measurements that are generally used for neutral atmosphere RO can also be used to produce relative TEC profiles of the lower ionosphere with high vertical resolution (approximately 100m at E region altitudes). In this talk, we review recent results describing the coverage and quality of E region ionospheric measurements collected by Spire. Furthermore, we describe Spire's Es automated detection algorithm that is based on a Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) of the relative TEC profiles and we compare our results with time coincident and co-located ionosonde data. We also look toward the future and describe how low cost satellite constellations can be used to monitor of the occurrence of Es layers and discuss how these first results open the way to global, near real-time monitoring and classification of more general ionospheric anomalies.- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMSA23C3140M
- Keywords:
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- 2427 Ionosphere/atmosphere interactions;
- IONOSPHERE;
- 2447 Modeling and forecasting;
- IONOSPHERE;
- 2471 Plasma waves and instabilities;
- IONOSPHERE;
- 2494 Instruments and techniques;
- IONOSPHERE