A Reconstruction Method for Ionospheric f o F 2 Spatial Mapping over Australia.

To improve the accuracy of predicting the ionospheric critical frequency of the F2 layer (f_oF₂), a reconstruction method for the spatial map of the ionospheric f_oF₂ based on modified geomagnetic dip coordinates is proposed. Based on the strong correlation between the ionospheric f_oF₂ and geomagnetic coordinates, the variation function of ionospheric distance is built. In the end, the spatial map of the ionospheric f_oF₂ is predicted by solving the Kriging equation. The results show that the regional characteristics of the ionospheric f_oF₂ analyzed by the proposed method are consistent with the observations. Compared with the reconstructed value of f_oF₂ using traditional geographic coordinates, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) in high solar activity years decreased by 0.43 MHz, and the relative RMSE decreased by 5.48%; The RMSE decreased by 0.35 MHz during low solar activity which is 5.99% lower to relative RMSE. The research results provide support for high-frequency communication frequency selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]