Real Time 3D Ionospheric Modelling with Ray Tracing Application over Mediterranean Area

Istanbul, Turkey.

This poster deals with some practical examples of instantaneous 3D modelling of regional ionosphere, based on ionosondes data from the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica
e Vulcanologia, INGV.
Characteristic anchor points have been chosen for each ionospheric region. These points are joint by an adaptive ionospheric profiler derived from the one used in
Autoscala. For the F2 region the anchor point is given by the real height hmF2 of the layer and its critical frequency foF2. These values are obtained basing on the
observed heights (hmF2ROME[OBS] and hmF2GIBILMANNA[OBS]) and critical frequencies (foF2ROME[OBS] and foF2GIBILMANNA[OBS]) of the F2 layer, which are compared with the corresponding monthly median given by CCIR maps using Shimazaki’s formulation.
The differences
dhmF2ROME = hmF2ROME[OBS] - hmF2ROME[CCIR]
dhmF2GIBILMANNA = hmF2 GIBILMANNA [OBS] - hmF2 GIBILMANNA [CCIR]
are thus computed and used in Kriging method to update the values given by CCIR maps.
For the F1 region the critical frequency is derived form a solar zenith angle dependent model adjusted to match the values of foF1 measured in Rome and Gibilmanna.
For the E region the height is set to 110 km, while the critical frequency is estimated by a standard solar zenith angle and solar activity dependent model.
The model produces as an output a 3D matrix which can be profitably used as an input for a Matlab/Fortran based ray tracing program recently developed at INGV.

• Bianchi, C., Settimi, A., Azzarone, A., IONORT - Ionosphere Ray-Tracing (Programma di ray-tracing nel magnetoplasma ionosferico), INGV Technical Report N. 161, INGV Printing Office, Rome, Italy, 2010.
• Bilitza, D., International Reference Ionosphere IRI-90 (ed.), NSSDC 90-22, Greenbelt, Maryland, 1990.
• Scotto, C., Electron density profile calculation technique for Autoscala ionogram analysis, Adv. Space Res. 44, 756–766, 2009.