Estimation of Ionospheric TEC for GPS Error Correction
Sep 2020
A Bachelor's final year research project on why a GPS device can be off by several meters and software to measure the single biggest reason why.
A GPS signal travels from a satellite through the ionosphere, a charged layer of the upper atmosphere, before it reaches a receiver on the ground. That layer bends and slows the signal down, and by a different amount depending on the time of day, the season, and how active the sun is so the delay it causes is never constant. That inconsistent delay turns out to be the largest single source of GPS position error.
Built a MATLAB and Python pipeline that reads raw, publicly available satellite observation data (the RINEX format used by real GPS ground stations), pulls out the dual frequency signal measurements, and calculates the Total Electron Content (TEC), a number that estimates exactly how much delay the ionosphere added at a given moment.
Published as "Review on Estimation of Ionospheric TEC" in the International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET), Volume 07, Issue 09, September 2020.
MATLAB · Python · RINEX · GNSS/GPS · Signal Processing
