High-Resolution 3-D Imaging of Daytime Sporadic-E Over Japan by Using GNSS TEC and Ionosondes

Abstract

A novel two-step three-dimensional (3-D) computerized ionospheric tomography (CIT) technique has been developed to image the structure of daytime midlatitude sporadic-E (Es). The CIT relies on total electron content (TEC) from a dense ground-based Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver network over the Japan area. First, on a coarse grid, the TEC data and a multiplicative algebraic reconstruction technique (MART) are used to reconstruct the F region from a smooth background. Then, on a fine grid and using singular value decomposition (SVD), the residues after deducting the F region contribution to TEC are utilized in reconstructing the E region, extending 80–180 km in altitude. To vertically constrain the E region solution, we introduced a family of subsets of time-dependent empirical orthogonal functions (EOFs) from a Chapman model function tuned to manually scaled ionosonde observations. We analyzed three event days to validate the results. East-West (E-W) aligned frontal structures, spanning several hundred kilometers, migrating northward in the morning and southward in the afternoon, were observed. The new technique effectively tracks the Es-height variation over time, which had proved difficult to reproduce in earlier tempts at 3-D Es reconstructions.