Mapping the ionosphere with millions of phones.

ABSTRACT: The ionosphere is a layer of weakly ionized plasma bathed in Earth's geomagnetic field extending about 50-1,500 kilometres above Earth¹. The ionospheric total electron content varies in response to Earth's space environment, interfering with Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS) signals, resulting in one of the largest sources of error for position, navigation and timing services². Networks of high-quality ground-based GNSS stations provide maps of ionospheric total electron content to correct these errors, but large spatiotemporal gaps in data from these stations mean that these maps may contain errors³. Here we demonstrate that a distributed network of noisy sensors-in the form of millions of Android phones-can fill in many of these gaps and double th

SUBMITTER: Smith J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11560844 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature