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Using Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) observation data for developing a high-precision ionospheric Total Electron Content (TEC) model is one of the essential subjects in ionospheric physics research and the application of satellite navigation correction. In this study, we integrate the Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) method with the TEC data provided by the Center for Orbit Determination in Europe (CODE), and observed by the dense GNSS receivers operated by the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China (CMONOC) to construct a regional ionospheric TEC model over China. The EOF analysis of CODE TEC in China from 1998 to 2010 shows that the first-order EOF component accounts for 90.3813% of the total variation of the ionospheric TEC in China. Meanwhile, the average value of CODE TEC is consistent with the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of the first-order EOF base function, which mainly reflects the latitude and diurnal variations of TEC in China. The first-order coefficient after EOF decomposition shows an obvious 11-year period and semi-annual variations. The maximum amplitude of semi-annual variation mainly appears in March and October, which is closely associated with the variation in geographical longitude, the semi-annual change of the low-latitude electric field, and the ionospheric fountain effect. The second-order coefficient has an evident annual variation, the minimum amplitude mainly occurs in March, August, and September, and the amplitude values in the high solar activity years are more significant than those in the low solar activity years. The third-order coefficient mainly shows the characteristics of annual variation, and the fourth-order coefficient shows the noticeable semi-annual and annual variations. The third and fourth-order coefficients are both modulated by the solar activity index F10.7. The ionospheric TEC model in China, driven by CMONOC real-time GNSS observation data, can better reflect the latitude, local time and seasonal variation characteristics of ionospheric TEC over China. In particular, it can clearly show the spring and autumn asymmetry of ionospheric TEC in the low latitudes. The root mean square error of the absolute error between the model and the actual observation is mainly distributed around 2.45 TECU (1 TECU = 1016 electrons/m2). The values of the TEC model constructed in this study are closer to the actual observed values than those of the CODE TEC in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new incoherent scatter radar (ISR) has recently been dedicated at Sanya (SYISR), China (geographic 18.34°N and 109.62°E) to detect the low‐latitude ionospheric plasma by conducting continuous operation and electronic beam steering on a pulse‐to‐pulse basis. This paper provides an overview of the processing procedure of SYISR ion line data and presents some preliminary observational results under various transmitting signal schemes and different working modes, such as the zenith‐directed mode and meridional and zonal scanning modes, with comparison to the international reference ionosphere model (IRI‐2016), ionosonde and Ionospheric Connections Explorer (ICON) satellite measurements. The diurnal and altitude versus latitude variation characteristics of electron density (Ne), electron temperature (Te), and ion temperature (Ti) are in accordance with those of other ISR measurements in mid‐low latitudes, and IRI shows some discrepancies with SYISR observations, including the sunrise and sunset enhancement in SYISR_Ti and the overestimated IRI_Te. The comparison between the daytime SYISR_Ti and ICON_Ti shows good consistency based on 31 observational samples. The measurement of line‐of‐sight velocity (Vi) for long pulse can reveal the properties of the medium scale traveling ionospheric disturbances manifesting the radar's potential to study the mesoscale ionospheric variation in the Sanya area. The derived vector velocities with a better measurement accuracy during the day are generally in line with ionospheric plasma physics. The results show that SYISR can obtain continuous ionospheric parameters through multi‐beam scanning measurements at ∼700 km horizontal scale, which provides important information for studying the atmosphere‐ionosphere‐magnetosphere coupling and ionospheric scintillation at low latitudes in East Asia. Plain Language Summary: China's first phased‐array incoherent scatter radar was completed in 2021 in Sanya, which is called SYISR. SYISR aims to investigate fundamental scientific problems in the ionosphere, including atmosphere‐ionosphere‐magnetosphere coupling, regional ionospheric properties and ionospheric irregularities in southern China. SYISR can directly measure electron density, electron and ion temperature, and drift velocity of the ionospheric plasma and can be used to indirectly obtain the temperature of the neutral atmosphere, wind field and irregularity information. This paper describes in detail the data processing from the IQ signal to the derived ionospheric parameters for SYISR. Ionospheric experiments in various scanning modes have been performed, mainly including a single beam in zenith‐directed mode and multiple beams in meridian and zonal scanning modes, and the obtained results are evaluated. These experimental results are evaluated through comparison with the IRI‐2016 model, digital ionosonde and Ionospheric Connections Explorer satellite. The comparison results indicate that SYISR is able to provide reliable, unique, and important ionospheric information for the study of ionospheric science at low latitudes in East Asia. Key Points: Sanya incoherent scatter radar (SYISR) is a new phased array system dedicated to the ionospheric observations at low latitudes in Asia sectorSYISR is operational, providing high‐quality ionospheric measurements in multiple radar scanning modes and radio pulse schemes modesData processing procedures and initial ion‐line results using typical experiment modes are reported [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Led by the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, we have built a brand‐new modular active digital phased array, with all solid‐state transmission and digital receiving incoherent scatter radar (ISR) in Sanya (18.3°N, 109.6°E), a station in low latitude China called Sanya ISR (SYISR) since 2015. The development of SYISR involved the indoor design and development of key components, an outdoor prototype test, and the production and debugging of the entire array. The unique features of SYISR include a single‐channel directly connected T/R unit and antenna, a radar array monitoring and calibration network, environmental adaptability design and open architecture. The entire radar has 4,096 channels and 5,930 modules in total. All the technical indices, mainly including a >2 MW peak power, a 43 dBi antenna gain and a <120 K noise temperature, either meet or are superior to the designed value through an independent evaluation. Waveforms of single pulse, linear frequency modulation, Barker code, long pulse and alternating code have been implemented to meet multiple purposes. Four observational modes for ionospheric experiments, including zenith stare, perpendicular to geomagnetic field, meridian scan, and all sky scan, have been developed. We have implemented time domain decoding, frequency domain decoding, and statistical inversion methods in calculating the autocorrelation function and power spectra in signal processing. The preliminary experimental results on ionospheric parameters, plasma lines, irregularities and hard targets are reasonable and encouraging, which greatly enhances our confidence in achieving our scientific goals in the future. Plain Language Summary: The Earth's ionosphere (∼60–1,000 km above the sea level) is composed of dense plasma, which shows complicated variations versus altitude, geographic location, and solar activity level. When a ground‐based radio wave is transmitted onto these plasmas, it will generate stimulated radiation, with a small portion of them radiating back to the ground. If this backscattered radiation is collected by a ground‐based radar, a variety of ionospheric parameters, including plasma density, temperature, and movement speed, can be derived through a complicated signal processing algorithm. An ionospheric monitoring method called incoherent scatter radar (ISR) was therefore developed. However, since this backscattered radiation is very weak, the ISR should be built with sufficiently large power (usually megawatts) and apertures (usually hundreds of square meters). This leads to the high cost of building an ISR, with only a few having been built in the world thus far. In this paper, we describe a newly built ISR, called Sanya ISR (SYISR), in low latitude China by applying modern radar technologies, such as modular active digital phased arrays, all solid‐state transmitting and digital receiving. The development of SYISR followed the principle of a gradual and orderly progress, including indoor design, outdoor prototype testing and the entire radar construction and debugging. The radar technical indices have been evaluated, and all meet the designed value. We also developed a signal processing algorithm and a variety of observational modes. Finally, preliminary experimental results are shown, which are reasonable and encouraging. In the future, we will gradually achieve our scientific goals via effective data accumulation and analysis. Key Points: Sanya incoherent scatter radar (SYISR) is a newly built incoherent scatter radar in low latitude China with modular active electronic scanning, digital phased array, solid‐state transmitting, and digital receivingThis paper details the hardware, key parameters, data processing and preliminary experimental results of SYISRThe key parameters meet or are superior to the original design, and the preliminary observations are encouraging [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Incoherent scatter radar (ISR), as one of the most powerful ionospheric detection methods on the ground, can obtain a variety of important ionospheric parameters with high spatiotemporal resolution over the entire ionosphere. A high-power large-aperture phased array (PA) ISR, named Sanya ISR (SYISR), is under construction at Sanya (18.3°N, 109.6°E), China. Two remote receive-only arrays of SYISR will be built in the future to form a tristatic ISR system, which will be the only multistatic ISR in a low-latitude region. Estimating the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is the key task for analyzing the detection accuracy and evaluating the radar performance. In this article, the SNR of the SYISR tristatic system is simulated for the first time using a suitable PA bistatic radar equation. The parameters of the designed SYISR tristatic system are used in the simulation. Subsequently, the SNR spatial variability of the bistatic PA radar and bistatic equivalent parabolic dish (EPD) radar is analyzed and compared. The results show that the radar system constants, effective scattering volume, and spatial variable terms are the three different sources of factors affecting the SNR. They jointly determine the spatial distribution characteristics of the SNR. Moreover, the PA SNR is significantly different from the EPD SNR numerically and morphologically. The PA SNR is weaker than the EPD SNR in the whole observational space. In the horizontal direction, the PA SNR has a single-peak structure, while the EPD SNR has a double-peak structure. The root cause of these differences is that the beamwidth of a PA changes with the beam directions, while that of the EPD is fixed. This research provides a theoretical basis for the design of tristatic PA ISR in hardware optimization and error analysis, which will be shown in another article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Larger-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (LSTIDs) are studied using the total electron content ( TEC) data observed from 246 GPS receivers in and around China during the medium storm on 28 May 2011. It is the first attempt to get the two-dimensional TEC perturbation maps in China. Two LSTID events are detected: one is in southwestern China before midnight propagating from low to middle latitude to the distance of about 1200 km with the phase front extending to about 500 km, and the other is in northeastern China after midnight propagating from middle to low latitudes to the distance of about 1200 km with the phase front extending to nearly 1400 km. By using the multichannel maximum-entropy method, we get the propagation parameters of these two LSTIDs. The LSTID that occurs before midnight has a higher horizontal phase velocity and a larger damping rate corresponding to the after midnight LSTID, and this may be caused by the relatively large vertical background TEC and high atmospheric temperature in the southwest of China before midnight. According to the variations of magnetic H component observed in high latitudes, the source region for the after midnight LSTID is likely to be located 1400-2600 km east of 140°E and north of 42°N; the before midnight LSTID is propably excited by the atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs) generated by the Joule heating of the equatorial electrojet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 12 May 2008 at 06:28 UT a major earthquake of magnitude 8.0 struck Wenchuan County (31.0° N, 103.4° E) in southwest China. Ionospheric total electron content (TEC) values, derived from a network of 58 global positioning system (GPS) receivers over China and nearby countries, were used to investigate the ionospheric precursor of the great earthquake. The observations revealed that there was an anomalous enhancement in TEC (100% increase on the 15-day median) during the afternoon-evening sector on 9 May 2008 while geomagnetic conditions were quiet (Kp ≤ 2). The TEC variations on the west side and east side of the epicentre show large dissimilarity on 9 May 2008. By constructing the longitude/latitude TEC map, the distribution of the region predominated by increased TEC values was shown to be localized at longitudes 90-130° E. Our results suggest that this abnormal enhancement was most possibly a seismo-ionospheric signature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of ionospheric anomaly variation before large earthquakes has attracted the attention of geophysicists for many years. This is primarily because ionospheric anomaly variation has been considered to constitute one possible method to identify earthquake precursors. Since China covers several major earthquake zones, it is critical for Chinese scientists to study possible ionospheric earthquake precursors. In this report, we provide a brief summary of recent progress in the study of ionospheric earthquake precursors mainly from Chinese mainland researchers, as well as some other scientists. This report focuses on: (1) some case studies of ionospheric abnormal behaviors before some great earthquakes around the world (e.g., M7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake, M9.0 Tohoku-Oki Earthquake, M7.0 Haiti Earthquake); and (2) some statistical characteristics of ionospheric anomalies before earthquakes, including their temporal and spatial distributions, and the relationship with the forthcoming earthquake. The above-mentioned studies may provide some new and beneficial insights for the future study of ionospheric earthquake precursors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the development of Sanya Incoherent Scatter Radar (SYISR), which is a major scientific instrument project founded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), we established a prototype system of 8 subarrays (named SYISR-8 hereafter), including 256 transceiver modules totally, beginning in July 2018 to verify the functions of the radar. Based on SYISR-8, we configured the system to detect the meteor echo with high range resolution. During a continuous observation interval of 16 h, 55 meteor echo events were found. Among these events, 34 cases were head echoes, 18 cases were specular trail echoes, and 3 cases were head echo and nonspecular trail echo concurrent events. We have observed 2 potential direct meteoroid fragmentation cases of all 55 meteor events. It demonstrates that potential direct observation of meteoroid fragmentation could be observed by a relatively small aperture and power using pulse compression processing. However, the occurrence ratio of meteoroid fragmentation in our experiment is approximately 6%, which is considerably lower than that observed in previous studies, which needs further investigation. • Meteor echoes observation results by SYISR-8 are demonstrated in a high range resolution mode. • The SYISR-8 was configured to detect meteoroid with 37.5m resolution through pulse compression technique. • Two potential direct meteoroid fragmentation cases were observed for the first time to our knowledge using the SYISR-8. • Typical meteor echoes could be observed by a high range resolution radar with relatively small aperture and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]