IRI-Plas optimization based ionospheric tomography

Abstract

Ionosphere plays an important role in High Frequency (HF) communications. In this paper, Global Ionospheric Maps (GIM) of Total Electron Content (TEC), maximum ionization height (hmF2) and critical frequency (foF2) of F2-layer are presented. These maps are obtained from the Nonlinear Least Squares (NLSQ) optimization of the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) model extended to the Plasmasphere (IRI-Plas) using the one-hour resolution GIM-TEC (UHR) maps provided by the Polytechnical University of Catalonia (UPC) as the reference input.