Travelling Ionospheric Disturbance Direction of Propagation Detection Using Swarm A-C In-Situ Electron Density

Abstract

We demonstrate a simple method to estimate the direction of propagation of travelling ionospheric disturbances using in-situ electron density measurements in the topside ionosphere by exploiting the side-by-side flying configuration of Swarm A and C satellites. Corresponding cases of TIDs recorded on detrended GPS total electron content (TEC) maps over different continents are used to validate this approach. This simple method could be suitable to detect the direction of propagation of TID wavefronts over the ocean and the polar regions where ground-based GNSS stations are unavailable.

Keywords

• swarm mission
• Langmuir probe in-situ electron density
• GPS total electron content
• travelling ionospheric disturbances