Automatic Detection of Equatorial Plasma Bubbles Using Rate of TEC Index from SiReNT GNSS Data

Kurzfassung

Equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) are regions of reduced plasma density that develop within the ionospheric F layer near the magnetic equator after sunset, rising through the surrounding denser plasma. Their development, drift, and decay modulate trans-ionospheric radio propagation, causing phase and amplitude scintillation that degrades the performance of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) positioning, navigation, and timing. The statistical understanding of such formation can provide signal integrity information for ground-based and space-based augmentation systems. In particular, detection and simultaneous classification of EPBs are necessary for the proper distinction between locally generated and drifting bubbles. A first step in this challenging task consists in characterizing the structure of each bubble. Here, automatic detection and enumeration of EPBs through estimation of the rate of total electron content (TEC) index (ROTI) using the closely-spaced dual frequency Singapore satellite positioning reference network (SiReNT) is proposed. From this metric, each peak is described by a Gaussian function characterized by a mean value, a scaling factor, and a standard deviation. Using an aggregation strategy, the onset and decay of each EPB can be defined.