Topside Ionospheric Tomography Exclusively Based on LEO POD GPS copyright Phases: Application to Autonomous LEO DCB Estimation

Topside Ionospheric Tomography Exclusively Based on LEO POD GPS copyright Phases: Application to Autonomous LEO DCB Estimation

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This paper presents a novel technique to estimate DCBs from GPS transmitters and receivers on-board Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites.The technique consists of obtaining the DCBs as residuals from the difference between the ionospheric combination of the code and the associated ionospheric delay.The ionospheric delay is computed with TOMION, a background-model-free Brushes ionospheric tomographic technique based on dual-frequency GPS copyright phase data only, and solved with a Kalman filter.Thus, DCBs are also estimated epoch-wise from the LEO Precise Orbit Determination (POD) GPS receiver as a secondary product.

The results for GPS satellite DCBs, obtained exclusively from the three MetOp LEO POD GPS receivers over four consecutive weeks, are in full agreement (i.e., at the level of Fridge Roller a few tenths of ns) with those reported independently with other techniques from hundreds of ground-based receivers exclusively, by JPL and CODE analysis centers.