Generation of Ionospheric Scintillation Maps over Southern China based on Kriging method

Abstract Trans-ionospheric communication of radio waves can be affected by ionospheric scintillation which can lead to a complete loss of lock. Scintillation is more prevalent in the ionospheric equatorial anomaly region, and at high latitudes, which is one of the main concerns of space weather services. In this paper, we present the first time a technique to derive a near-real-time ionospheric scintillation index S4 regional mapping based on Kriging method using six low latitude stations in Southern China. The result is compared with the Global Ionospheric Scintillation Propagation Model (GISM) and ionospheric irregularity index represented by the rate of change total electron content index (ROTI) to assess the validation and accuracy of output of Kriging method. It shows that our map could reflect better the regional characteristic and variations of S4 in the Southern China. The lower mean absolute errors and the mean square errors indicate that the results of Kriging method are relatively true and reliable, which could be considered monitoring and warning regional ionospheric scintillation activities under disturbed space weather conditions.