A quiet day empirical model of electron density in the Indian equatorial F-region

Abstract

In this paper, we present a quiet day empirical model of electron density (Ne) for the Indian equatorial zone at an altitude of 500 km. The model is applicable to all levels of solar activity and is based on the observation that the electron density in the F-region of the Indian zone is correlated with the F10.7 cm solar flux at each local time and in every month. Using this characteristic, we describe the model for electron density. In this model, we have used the least square fit and the polynomial fit. The electron density measured by the Retarding Potential Analyzer (RPA) on board the SROSS C2 satellite from 1995 to 2000 and FORMOSAT-1 (ROCSAT-1) satellite, operated by the National Space Organization (NSPO, now the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA)) of the Republic of China (Taiwan), from 1999 to 2004 is used to derive the relationship between Ne and F10.7. The average altitudes of SROSS-C2 and FORMOSAT-1 are 500 km and 600 km respectively. Due to this height difference, the observed data obtained by FORMOSAT-1 is normalized to match the SROSS-C2 data. The model is compared with the observations and is found to be in good agreement with them. It is applicable to quiet (Ap<15) conditions and is limited to a fixed altitude of 500 km within the latitude range of 10° S to 10° N around the 75° E meridian.

Keywords

• equatorial ionosphere
• modeling
• solar activity cycle
• mathematical and numerical techniques