SWACI - Total Electron Content (TEC) Longitudinal Gradients

SWACI is a research project of DLR supported by the State Government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Radio signals, transmitted by modern communication and navigation systems may be heavily disturbed by space weather hazards. Thus, severe temporal and spatial changes of the electron density in the ionosphere may significantly degrade the signal quality of various radio systems which even may lead to a complete loss of the signal. By providing specific space weather information, in particular now- and forecast of the ionospheric state, the accuracy and reliability of impacted communication and navigation systems shall be improved.

The total electron content (TEC) is defined as the integral of the electron density along the ray path between satellite and receiver. Thus, TEC provides the number of electrons per square meter. The most frequently used unit is 1TECU = 1x1016 electrons / m2.

TEC is derived from dual frequency code and carrier phase measurements provided by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). SWACI uses GPS measurements from various European GNSS networks such as the International GNSS Service (IGS), European Reference Frame (EUREF), Norwegian Mapping Authority (NMA), and ascos distributed by the Federal Agency of Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) Frankfurt. The global TEC maps are mainly created by using data provided by the International GNSS Service Real-Time Pilot Project (IGS-RTPP).

To generate TEC maps of vertical TEC, the slant measurements have to be transformed to the vertical. In a first approximation the ionospheric range error in GNSS is proportional to TEC.

These TEC maps are used to derive latitudinal and zonal gradients, rate of change of TEC (5 min increments), 27 days medians, hourly forecasts of TEC, and corresponding error estimates.

Spatial resolution (latitude x longitude): 2 °x 2° (Europe), 2.5° x 5° (globally)

Identification

Data identification

Citation

Date (Creation)
2015-03-11T00:00:00
Citation identifier
https://geoservice.dlr.de/catalogue/srv/metadata/66f3823d-129b-459f-bacc-d1c04b7fcc35
Presentation form
Digital map
Status
Completed
Point of contact
  German Aerospace Center (DLR)
Author
  German Aerospace Center (DLR) - ( )
Maintenance and update frequency
Not planned

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

  • Atmospheric conditions
Keywords

  • urn:eop:DLR:EOWEB:Longitudinal-TEC-Gradients

  • SWACI

  • total electron content

  • Ionosphere

  • TEC

  • Longitudinal-TEC-Gradients
Use limitation

Conditional

Legal constraints

Access constraints
Other restrictions
Use constraints
License
Other constraints

Limited for public use

SWACI License
Spatial representation type
Grid
Denominator
0
Language

eng
Character set
UTF8
Topic category
  • Climatology, meteorology, atmosphere

Extent

N
S
E
W
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Begin date
2005-01-24T00:00:00
End date
2008-01-30T00:00:00
 

Distribution

Distribution

Distribution format
OnLine resource
Ionosphere Monitoring and Prediction Center Homepage ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link )
 

Quality

Data quality

Hierarchy level
Series

Domain consistency

Measure identification
INSPIRE / Conformity_001

Conformance result

Citation

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Explanation

See the referenced specification
Pass
Yes

Lineage

Statement

For details see:

https://impc.dlr.de/products/

Description

Please refer to https://impc.dlr.de/products/ for more details.

 

Ref. system

Reference system identifier
EPSG / WGS 84 (EPSG:4326) / 7.4
 

Metadata

Metadata

File identifier
66f3823d-129b-459f-bacc-d1c04b7fcc35 XML
Metadata language
English
Character set
UTF8
Hierarchy level
Series
Hierarchy level name

Dataseries
Date stamp
2024-06-20T14:12:12
Metadata standard name

ISO 19115-1:2014/19139
Metadata standard version

1.0
Point of contact
  German Aerospace Center (DLR)
 
 

Overviews

overview
large_thumbnail
overview
thumbnail

Spatial extent

N
S
E
W
thumbnail


Keywords

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
Atmospheric conditions

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Access to the portal

Associated resources

Not available