IGS real-time service for global ionospheric total electron content modeling

Benefiting from global multi-frequency and multi-constellation GNSS measurements provided by the experimental International GNSS real-time service (IGS RTS), a predicting-plus-modeling approach employed by Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) for the routine generation of real-time global ionospheric maps (RT-GIM) is first reported. Along with RT-GIMs generated by Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC), the quality of CAS and UPC RT-GIMs in IONEX format is assessed during a low soar activity period from September 2017 to December 2019. The differential slant total electron contents (dSTEC) derived from 50 GPS stations of the IGS and Jason-3 vertical TECs (VTEC) over the ocean are used as references. In comparison with different reference TECs, CAS and UPC RT-GIMs are approximately 1.7–4.9% and 8.6–12.5% worse than the respective post-processed GIMs CASG and UQRG, respectively. Using RTCM ionospheric data streams from CAS, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) and UPC, the first experimental IGS combined RT-GIM is generated and validated in actual real-time conditions. Compared to Jason-3 VTEC measurements available during the period of common availability, from October 2018 to April 2019, RT-GIM discrepancies present similar relative RMS errors, which are 33, 36, 36 and 38% for CNES, combined one, UPC and CAS, respectively. Aside from a better understanding of the influence of working in the original IONEX versus RTCM ionospheric formats, the update to a new experimental adaptation of RT strategy is highlighted by UPC, and the computation of multi-layer RT-GIM is emphasized by CAS in view of the inadequacy of single-layer ionospheric assumption in the presence of large latitudinal gradients.