The tandem instrumented CubeSats experiment (TICE) in low earth orbit for continuous occultation observations of the ionosphere

摘要

Ionospheric occultation involves a radio beacon transmitter on a satellite propagating a near line-of-sight signal to a receiver on another satellite with a ray path passing trough the ionosphere. Satellites in low-earth-orbit perform GPS occultations by sporadically recording the phase and amplitudes of L-Band signals from GPS satellites at a much higher altitude. The advantage of the GPS occultation technique is that there are a large number of GPS satellites available for the LEO satellite to observe the ionosphere and provide electron density profiles. These profiles represent a profile averaged over about 500 km in horizontal range along the occultation propagation path. The disadvantages of the GPS occultation technique are (1) the measurements are not continuous because they only use GPS satellites near the plane of the LEO satellite orbit near the horizon, (2) only L-Band observations are made limiting the radio frequency range of the scintillation information, and (3) the location of a disturbance along the propagation path is not known to better than ∼200 km accuracy.