Research Article

Oblique Ionograms Automatic Scaling Algorithm OIASA application to the ionograms recorded by Ebro observatory ionosonde

¹ Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Via di Vigna Murata 605, Rome, Italy
² Observatori de l'Ebre, (OE), CSIC - Universitat Ramon Llull, Roquetes, Spain

^* Corresponding author: alessandro.ippolito@ingv.it

Received: 13 June 2017
Accepted: 6 December 2017

Abstract

The oblique ionograms automatic scaling algorithm (OIASA), developed at the INGV for the identification of trace of oblique ionograms, allows the determination of the maximum usable frequency (MUF) for communication between the transmitter and receiver, automatically rejecting poor quality ionograms. A test of the algorithm using data from a campaign of oblique soundings between Dourbes (50.1°N, 4.6°E) and Roquetes (40.8°N, 0.5°E) has been performed. Oblique soundings from three different campaigns have been studied, covering different geomagnetic conditions, in order to study the behavior of the autoscaling algorithm under quiet and perturbed geomagnetic periods. The reported results demonstrate that OIASA performance is not influenced by geomagnetic or ionospheric activity conditions. This demonstrates a satisfactory performance of the automatic scaling algorithm, even under different geomagnetic conditions, the potential application of OIASA as a near-real-time tool for ionospheric monitoring purposes, and its performance for tracking ionospheric effects caused by space weather events.