Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Apr 6;23(7):3766.
doi: 10.3390/s23073766.

Neustrelitz Total Electron Content Model for Galileo Performance: A Position Domain Analysis

Ciro Gioia  1 , Antonio Angrisano  2 , Salvatore Gaglione  3
Affiliations

Neustrelitz Total Electron Content Model for Galileo Performance: A Position Domain Analysis

Ciro Gioia et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Ionospheric error is one of the largest errors affecting global navigation satellite system (GNSS) users in open-sky conditions. This error can be mitigated using different approaches including dual-frequency measurements and corrections from augmentation systems. Although the adoption of multi-frequency devices has increased in recent years, most GNSS devices are still single-frequency standalone receivers. For these devices, the most used approach to correct ionospheric delays is to rely on a model. Recently, the empirical model Neustrelitz Total Electron Content Model for Galileo (NTCM-G) has been proposed as an alternative to Klobuchar and NeQuick-G (currently adopted by GPS and Galileo, respectively). While the latter outperforms the Klobuchar model, it requires a significantly higher computational load, which can limit its exploitation in some market segments. NTCM-G has a performance close to that of NeQuick-G and it shares with Klobuchar the limited computation load; the adoption of this model is emerging as a trade-off between performance and complexity. The performance of the three algorithms is assessed in the position domain using data for different geomagnetic locations and different solar activities and their execution time is also analysed. From the test results, it has emerged that in low- and medium-solar-activity conditions, NTCM-G provides slightly better performance, while NeQuick-G has better performance with intense solar activity. The NTCM-G computational load is significantly lower with respect to that of NeQuick-G and is comparable with that of Klobuchar.

Keywords: Ionosperic model; Klobuchar; NTCM; NeQuick-G.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
SPP diagram. The green block includes the three considered ionospheric algorithms.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Block diagram of the NTCM-G algorithm implemented in Matlab.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Distribution of the stations used for the analysis.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Effective ionization level in the period September 2014–December 2022.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Execution time ratio for the DOY 12, 2023 and for the Arequipa station. The ratio between execution times of couples of models is considered.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Horizontal errors for the three stations with intense solar activity (29 September 2014).
Figure 7
Figure 7
Horizontal errors for the three stations with medium solar activity (26 March 2016).
Figure 8
Figure 8
Horizontal errors for the three stations with low solar activity (15 December 2017).
Figure 9
Figure 9
Horizontal errors for the three stations with high solar activity (12 January 2023).
Figure 10
Figure 10
Mean horizontal positioning error for the stations considered in different solar conditions.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Mean vertical positioning error for the stations considered in different solar conditions.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Standard deviation of the horizontal positioning error for the stations considered in different solar conditions.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Standard deviation of the vertical positioning error for the stations considered in different solar conditions.
Figure 14
Figure 14
CDF of the horizontal positioning error in different solar conditions.
Figure 15
Figure 15
CDF of the vertical positioning error in different solar conditions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bassiri J., Hajj G. Modeling the GPS Signal Propagation Through the Ionosphere. National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Washington, DC, USA: 1992.
    1. Hoffmann-Wellenhof B., Lichtenegger H., Collins J. Global Positioning System: Theory and Practice. 5th ed. Springer; Berlin, Germany: 2012.
    1. Kaplan E., Hegarty C. Understanding GPS/GNSS: Principles and Applications. Artech House; New York, NY, USA: 2017.
    1. Demyanov V., Sergeeva M., Fedorov M., Ishina T., Gatica-Acevedo V.J., Cabral-Cano E. Comparison of TEC Calculations Based on Trimble, Javad, Leica, and Septentrio GNSS Receiver Data. Remote Sens. 2020;12:3268. doi: 10.3390/rs12193268. - DOI
    1. Teunissen P.J., Montenbruck O. Springer Handbook of Global Navigation Satellite Systems. Springer; Cham, Switzerland: 2017.

LinkOut - more resources