Fri Apr 10, F. Flechtner
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Schreiter, Lucas, Brack, Andreas, Männel, Benjamin, and Schuh, Harald, 2026. Ionospheric reconstruction from LEO–GNSS, LEO–PNT, and ground–GNSS using an information–filter. Advances in Space Research, 77(6):7240–7256, doi:10.1016/j.asr.2026.01.078.
• from the NASA Astrophysics Data System • by the DOI System •
@ARTICLE{2026AdSpR..77.7240S,
author = {{Schreiter}, Lucas and {Brack}, Andreas and {M{\"a}nnel}, Benjamin and {Schuh}, Harald},
title = "{Ionospheric reconstruction from LEO-GNSS, LEO-PNT, and ground-GNSS using an information-filter}",
journal = {Advances in Space Research},
keywords = {Ionosphere reconstruction, LEO-PNT, Kalman-Filter},
year = 2026,
month = mar,
volume = {77},
number = {6},
pages = {7240-7256},
abstract = "{This paper presents a theoretical study on ionospheric reconstruction
using GNSS data obtained from Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites
in a PNT (Position, Navigation, and Timing) configuration, where
the LEO satellites not only receive but also transmit GNSS
signals, which can be tracked by ground or mobile receivers. The
study is intended to pave the way for incorporating slant Total
Electron Content (TEC) data from ESA's upcoming LEO-PNT into
ionospheric reconstructions. We generate synthetic slant TEC for
three observation scenarios: Ground-GNSS, ground-LEO, and LEO-
GNSS links. As ground-truth, the IRI-20 model with the Ozhogin
plasmasphere extension is used. An inversion to recover the
electron density from slant TEC observations is performed using
an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) in the information-filter
formulation for all possible combinations of observation
scenarios. As the LEO constellation, we will utilize existing
LEO satellites that were available in May 2020, including Swarm,
COSMIC-2, GRACE-FO, Jason-3, Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2, and
Sentinel-3, as well as several Spire satellites. They cover a
variety of altitudes between 400 km and 1350 km. For this study,
we assume they could transmit dual-frequency GNSS-like signals
like a PNT mission, which is not the case for any of the
satellites mentioned. We only consider relative slant TEC to be
insensitive to calibration biases that may reach a few TEC
units. Given a real global ground-station network, LEO and GNSS
satellites, we show that 15-min reconstruction solutions, only
containing ground stations, cannot compete with solutions
including LEO satellites. Furthermore, our results show that the
joint use of LEO-POD (Precise Orbit Determination Antenna) and
LEO-PNT (RMSE at 500 km: <mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>0.95</mml:m
n><mml:mo>{\texttimes}</mml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mn>10</m
ml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn><
/mml:mrow></mml:msup><mml:mspace></mml:mspace><mml:msup><mml:mro
w><mml:mtext>cm</mml:mtext></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:m
o><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math>
) provides superior performance compared to configurations where
either is substituted by ground-based GNSS (ground-GNSS and PNT:
<mml:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>4.03</mml:mn><mml:mo>{\texttimes}</m
ml:mo><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mn>10</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mro
w><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup><mml
:mspace></mml:mspace><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>cm</mml:mtex
t></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml
:mrow></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math>; Gound-GNSS and POD <mml
:math><mml:mrow><mml:mn>1.18</mml:mn><mml:mo>{\texttimes}</mml:m
o><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mn>10</mml:mn></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><m
ml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>4</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msup><mml:msp
ace></mml:mspace><mml:msup><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>cm</mml:mtext></
mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mo>-</mml:mo><mml:mn>3</mml:mn></mml:mro
w></mml:msup></mml:mrow></mml:math>). We also show that the
reconstruction error roughly doubles when radio occultation
measurements are omitted. The dependency of the error on the
distribution of the ground stations is also shown. Areas with
only a few or no ground stations show the lowest correlation
between IRI-20 and the reconstructions, e.g., near Point Nemo,
where the correlation drops to 0.5.}",
doi = {10.1016/j.asr.2026.01.078},
adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026AdSpR..77.7240S},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}
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