Daily observations of the development of the ionospheric equatorial anomaly by means of differential Doppler shift method

Abstract

The differential Doppler frequency shifts observed by receiving coherent radio signals at frequencies of 150 and 400 MHz transmitted from the polar orbiting satellites of U.S. Navy Navigation Satellite System have been used to deduce the latitudinal variations of the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) near the ionospheric equatorial anomaly crest region. All latitudinal variations of TEC thus obtained for each passage of an NNSS satellite are used to construct daily contour plots of TEC in a latitude versus local time coordinates. It has been shown that these contour plot of TEC can be used to investigate the behavior of TEC around equatorial anomaly crest region. Some results are presented and discussed.