Advancing GNSS-RO Detection of Ionospheric Irregularities Using Refined Back Propagation and GOLD Data

This paper investigates on the detection and localization of ionospheric irregularities using GNSS Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO). We propose a new segmented phase screen (PS) approach to improve vertical and horizontal localization and remove the presence of outliers. The study focused on the May 2024 geomagnetic solar storm is presented, consisting of a comparison of the GNSS-RO back propagation (BP) irregularity positioning against the data of NASA’s Globalscale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) mission. This study is performed for validation purposes and examines the presence of equatorial plasma bubbles (EPBs) at predicted locations. Experimental RO data from EUMETSAT’s MetOp satellites is used to demonstrate the method’s capability to characterize the distribution of ionospheric irregularities. Results validate the segmented approach's capabilities of detecting irregularity structures and identifying their centroids with improved performance compared with the previous version of the algorithm.