GIST: A tool for Global Ionospheric Tomography using GPS ground and LEO d ata and sources of opportunity with applications in instrument calibration

摘要

Ionospheric tomography using GPS data has been reported in the literature andeven the application to radar altimeter calibration was succesfully carried outin a recent work. We here present a new software tool, called GlobalIonospheric Stochastic Tomography software (GIST), and its powerful capabilityfor ingesting GPS data from different sources (ground stations, receivers onboard LEO for navigation and occultation purposes) and other data such asaltimetry data to yield global maps with dense coverage and inherentcalibration of the instruments. We show results obtained including 106 IGSground stations, GPS/MET low rate occultation data, TOPEX/POSEIDON GPS datafrom the navigation antenna and NASA Radar Altimeter with the additionalbenefit of a direct estimation of the NRA bias. The possibility of ingestingdifferent kinds of ionospheric data into the tomographic model suggest a way toaccurately monitor the ionosphere with direct application to single frequencyinstrument calibration.