Investigation of optimum temporal update periods for regional TEC monitoring

Monitoring of the ionospheric variability is necessary for improving the performance of communication, navigation and positioning systems. Total Electron Content (TEC) is an important parameter since it can be used to analyze the variability of the ionosphere. Due to sparse distribution of samples, TEC can not be directly obtained everywhere on the ionosphere and accurate interpolation methods are needed for generating TEC maps. The optimum temporal update period (TUP) for regional Total Electron Content (TEC) monitoring has to be determined for capturing significant variations. In this study, the wide sense stationary (WSS) period is investigated whether it is possible to use the estimated WSS periods as the TUPs of the regional TEC maps. The sliding window statistical analysis method is used to estimate the WSS period. The WSS periods are compared with the difference between the maps obtained by Ordinary Kriging (OK) method. It is observed that the maximum WSS periods are following the length of time delays between the TEC maps at which the first significant difference occurs. The minimum WSS periods have to be used if the small variations are needed to be monitored within the day of interest. The WSS periods can be used as the TUPs for the regional TEC monitoring and can be adaptively adjusted.