Evaluation of GPS Ionospheric Time-Delay Model

Abstract

For single-frequency global positioning system (GPS) users,uncompensated ionospheric GPS-signal time delay is the largestsource of range-measurement error, contributing as much as 100 m.To improve performance for these users, a numeric model of theionospheric range error was incorporated into the GPS system. Thispaper presents an assessment of that model in which actualionospheric time-delay values as measured by GPS dual-frequencyreceivers were compared with model values computed at the sametime points. Comparison was made over a broad range of conditionswith dependency of model accuracy on several of the modelparameters. It appears that the model leads to an overall reductionin rms range measurement error of 60 percent.