Dual-frequency Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers present a plausible and cost-effective way of computing Total Electron Content (TEC). For accurate estimates of TEC, frequency-dependent satellite and receiver instrumental biases should be removed from GPS measurements properly. Although instrumental satellite bias values are widely available through the internet from various International GPS Service (IGS) analysis centers, receiver biases (also known as differential code biases or interfrequency biases) are provided only for a very few GPS stations and a select number of days. This makes it very difficult to compute TEC for a single station. In this study, an online, single station receiver bias estimation algorithm, IONOLAB-BIAS, is developed and implemented to obtain daily and monthly averages of receiver bias. The algorithm is successfully applied to both quiet and disturbed days of the ionosphere for stations positioned in high-latitude, midlatitude, and equatorial regions. The receiver bias estimates are compared with two of the basic methods in the literature that can be applied off-line, and also with the receiver bias values provided from the IGS centers for a select number of stations. It is observed that IONOLAB-BIAS is in excellent accordance with the sparse estimates from the IGS centers for all ionospheric states and regions. IONOLAB-BIAS has a high potential to be an alternative receiver bias computation algorithm with its ease of implementation and accurate estimates for any single station GPS-TEC. Copyright 2008 by the American Geophysical Union

[1] The variability of space weather can best be captured using total electron content (TEC), which corresponds to total number of electrons on a ray path. The dual-frequency ground based GPS receivers provide a cost-effective means for monitoring TEC. Computation of TEC for a single GPS station is a challenge due to various unknowns and ambiguities such as inter-frequency receiver bias and satellite bias, choice of mapping function, and peak height of ionosphere for ionospheric piercing point. In this study, IONOLAB group introduces a robust, automatic, online computation routine near-real time TEC, IONOLAB-TEC, for IGS and/or EUREF stations from www.ionolab.org. The user can choose online one station or multiple stations, date or dates for the computation. The IONOLAB-TEC values can be compared with TEC estimates from IGS analysis centers. The output can be obtained either in graphical form, or IONOLAB-TEC estimates can be provided in an excel file. The service is easy to use with a graphical user interface. This unique and original space weather application is provided online, and IONOLAB-TEC estimates are downloaded automatically to the user defined directories under user defined filenames.

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layer is the most important and characteristic layer of the ionosphere in the propagation of high frequency (HF) waves due to the highest level of conductivity in the propagation path. In this study, the relation of Total Electron Content (TEC) with the maximum ionization height and the critical frequency of-layer are investigated within their defined parametric range using the IRI model extended towards the plasmasphere (IRI-Plas). These two parameters are optimized using daily observed GPS-TEC (IONOLAB-TEC) in an iterational loop through Non-Linear Least Squares (NLSQ) optimization while keeping the physical correlation between and parameters. Optimization performance is examined for daily (24-hour) and hourly TEC optimizations separately. It is observed that hourly TEC optimization produces results with much smaller estimation errors. As a result of the hourly optimization, we obtain the hourly and estimates as they are the optimization parameters. Obtained and estimates are compared with the ionosonde estimates for various low, middle and high latitude locations for both quite and disturbed days of ionosphere. The results show that and estimates obtained from IRI-Plas optimization (IRI-Plas-Opt) and ionosonde are very much in agreement with each other. These results also signify that IRI-Plas provides a reliable background model for ionosphere. With the proposed method, it is possible to build a virtual ionosonde via optimization of IRI-Plas model using the observed TEC values.

International Reference Ionosphere (IRI) is the most acclaimed climatic model of the ionosphere. Since 2009, the range of the IRI model has been extended to the Global Positioning System (GPS) orbital height of 20,000 km in the plasmasphere. The new model, which is called IRI extended to Plasmasphere (IRI‐Plas), can input not only the ionosonde foF2 and hmF2 but also the GPS‐total electron content (TEC). IRI‐Plas has been provided at http://www.ionolab.org, where online computation of ionospheric parameters is accomplished through a user‐friendly interface. The solar proxies that are available in IRI‐Plas can be listed as sunspot number (SSN1), SSN2, F10.7, global electron content (GEC), TEC, IG, Mg II, Lyman‐α, and GEC_RZ. In this study, ionosonde foF2 data are compared with IRI‐Plas foF2 values with the Consultative Committee International Radio (CCIR) and International Union of Radio Science (URSI) model choices for each solar proxy, with or without the GPS‐TEC input for the equinox months of October 2011 and March 2015. It has been observed that the best fitting model choices in Root Mean Square (RMS) and Normalized RMS (NRMS) sense are the Jet Propulsion Laboratory global ionospheric maps‐TEC input with Lyman‐α solar proxy option for both months. The input of TEC definitely lowers the difference between the model and ionosonde foF2 values. The IG and Mg II solar proxies produce similar model foF2 values, and they usually are the second and third best fits to the ionosonde foF2 for the midlatitude ionosphere. In high‐latitude regions, Jet Propulsion Laboratory global ionospheric map‐TEC inputs to IRI‐Plas with Lyman‐α, GEC_RZ, and TEC solar proxies are the best choices. In equatorial region, the best fitting solar proxies are IG, Lyman‐α, and Mg II.