A Multi-GNSS, Multi-Frequency and Near Real-Time Ionospheric TEC Monitoring System for South America

L. MENDOZA; A. MEZA; ARAGÓN PAZ, J.M.; A. RICHTER

Montreal

Congreso; 27th IUGG General Assembly; 2019

International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics

Development of regional services able to provide ionospheric total electron content (TEC) maps with a high spatial resolution, and in near real-time, are of high importance for applications and the research community. Taking advantage of the public Global Navigational Satellite Systems (GNSS) infrastructure in South America, an operational ionospheric TEC monitoring system has been developed. The system incorporates data from multiple constellations (currently GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou), it employs multiple frequencies, and it produces continental-wide TEC maps with a latency of just few minutes. These maps could be employed, for example, to augment positioning with single-frequency GNSS receivers. They could be also employed as data input in space environment fore- and nowcasting models. A year-round comparison of the produced maps with several products issued by the International GNSS Service (IGS) resulted in mean biases lower than 1 TEC units (TECU), whereas their evaluation against direct and independent GNSS-based slant TEC measurements resulted in accuracies of the same magnitude. Taking into account the growing awareness in the public and private sectors on the threats related to space weather, the response of the whole monitoring system to an actual geomagnetic storm has been also investigated. The results suggest that the near real-time system should be quite capable to monitor the regional TEC at a high temporal rate even during periods of severe geomagnetic disturbances.