Ionospheric Models for GNSS Measurements

Abstract: There is an increasing demand for higher precision when using Global Navigation Satellite Systems, GNSS, for positioning. The measurement uncertainty depends on multiple factors and one of them is the ionosphere. Due to the ionosphere being ionized and contains free electrons, satellite signals that propagates the ionosphere will be affected by the total electron content, TEC. There is no way to reduce the errors caused by the ionosphere for single frequency measuring, but it can be done for dual frequencies. The objective for this study was to compare different websites modeling results for disturbance on ground and ionospheric turbulence. Three websites were used in the comparison: Swedish SWEPOS, Norwegian seSolstorm and German IMPC. Due to different content on the websites, SWEPOS was compared with seSolstorm and IMPC was compared to seSolstorm on five different dates. In total 10 comparisons were made. The websites were evaluated on four criteria, designed from the point of view of a land surveyor: user friendliness, graphical representation, knowledge requirement and mobile website adaptation. Each criterion was graded on a scale from 1–5, where 5 was considered the best. The study showed that the modeling results from the websites differed and that the difference can not only be explained by different graphical representation or scales for measure. The results for the evaluation and grading of the websites where as follows: SWEPOS 16, seSolstorm 13 and IMPC 12. This makes SWEPOS the best suited website to use for a land surveyor.