ARTEMIS: Advanced methodology development for Real-TimE Multi-constellation (BDS, Galileo and GPS) Ionosphere Services

In recent years the development of satellite navigation systems sped up and is no longer limited to well-known GPS and GLONASS systems. A good example of which are Europe’s Galileo and China’s BeiDou systems, which can be integrated for various scientific applications. ARTEMIS is a Chinese-Polish joint project concentrating on an important area of space research – space weather monitoring – through the development of new technologies and methods of Earth’s ionosphere monitoring. The main objective of the project is a development of the methodology for ionospheric real-time services using observations from BeiDou, Galileo and GPS systems, which are of extreme importance from professional (precise positioning, satellite navigation) and scientific points of view in the areas requiring current and accurate information on the state of the ionosphere.

 

The concept of ARTEMIS for real-time ionospheric space weather service is presented at first in this contribution, followed by the scientific progress from both Chinese and Polish sides during the year 2019. Benefiting from the real-time multi-constellation and multi-frequency GNSS data streams from regional and global permanent network stations, a prototype service system for real-time ionospheric monitoring was developed, which supports at current stage, the generation of global real-time Total Electron Content (TEC) maps, global Rate of TEC Index (ROTI) maps, as well as regional TEC/ROTI maps over Chinese and European regions. Using the home-made ionospheric scintillation (IS) monitoring receiver, i.e. BDSMART, an experimental campaign was carried out at low-latitude stations of China for the quality examination of BDSMART IS receivers. The ionospheric scintillation monitoring results from both GNSS L band and Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) low-frequency radio astronomical observations are highlighted by the Polish partner. The Chinese low-latitude Ionospheric Experimental Network (CHINE) for low-latitude ionospheric scintillation monitoring is now under construction. The generation of regional and global three-dimensional ionospheric electron densities in real-time is still in progress.