Ionospheric anomaly detection and Indian

ionospheric climatology from GAGAN

receivers

K. M. Sridhar, M. Sridhar, Swapna

Raghunath & D. Venkata Ratnam

Acta Geodaetica et Geophysica

A Quarterly of the Hungarian Academy
of Sciences

ISSN 2213-5812

Acta Geod Geophys

DOI 10.1007/s40328-020-00290-9

1 23
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s40328-020-00290-9

ORIGINAL STUDY

Ionospheric anomaly detection and Indian ionospheric

climatology from GAGAN receivers

K. M. Sridhar1   · M. Sridhar1 · Swapna Raghunath2 · D. Venkata Ratnam1

Received: 5 July 2019 / Accepted: 10 February 2020

© Akadémiai Kiadó 2020

Abstract
The ionospheric anomalies are often responsible for compromising the accuracy and per-
formance of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). GPS Aided Geo Augmented
Navigation (GAGAN) is the autonomous Space Based Augmentation System of India
which serves to provide timely error detection and correction for the corrupted GNSS sig-
nals in aircrafts. This paper discusses a Maximum Minimum Eigen (MME) detector to
identify the ionosphere induced errors in the GNSS signals. Data has been collected from
24 different GAGAN receivers spread over the length and breadth of India from January to
December, 2015. The climatology of ionospheric anomaly over India, has been established
using the MME detector. This paper discusses the spatio-temporal dependence of iono-
spheric anomalies over India. The observations indicate an increased ionospheric activity
in the course of equinoxes and a comparitively quiet ionosphere in the course of solstices.
A higher number of ionospheric disturbance incidents have been noticed closer to the
anomaly crest. The results from the MME detector have been verified against the Rate of
Total Electron Content (TEC) Index (ROTI) values and S4 observations for the year 2015
at the 24 GAGAN TEC stations. The disturbance climatology obtained from MME detec-
tor, ROTI and S4 exhibit a high correlation. However, the outcome of the MME detector
clearly shows that it is capable of picking up even small irregularities in the ionospheric
TEC.

Keywords  GAGAN · ROTI · Maximum minimum eigen detector · Ionosphere · GNSS

* D. Venkata Ratnam
dvratnam@kluniversity.in
K. M. Sridhar
karnammsridhar@gmail.com
M. Sridhar
sridhar.m@kluniversity.in
Swapna Raghunath
swapna.karnam1@gmail.com
1
Department of ECE, Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India
2
Department of ECE, G Narayanamma Institute of Technology and Science, Hyderabad, Telangana,
India

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1 Introduction

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals penetrate through the layers of earth’s
atmosphere to reach the receiver. These signals suffer a multitude of fluctuations during
their travel, most of which happen to be induced by the ionosphere. The ionospheric Total
Electron Content (TEC) causes the satellite signal to lag, which results in a pseudo range
error. The ionospheric free electrons display characteristic diurnal and seasonal changes
in volume and density due to the inclination of the sun, geomagnetic disturbances, solar
cycle and cosmic radiations (Mojalefa Moeketsi 2007; Deshpande et  al. 1978; Usoskin
et  al. 2009). The satellite signals experience dispersion and scattering in the ionosphere
especially during ionospheric disturbances leading to scintillations in phase and amplitude
(Doherty et al. 2000). Ionospheric spatial and temporal anomalies are treated as threats in
GNSS. Low latitude regions in particular experience stronger ionospheric plasma gradients
than the mid and high latitudes (Balsley 1969; Rastogi and Patel 1975).
A GNSS standalone receiver may jeopardize the safety critical applications like nav-
igation of missiles and aircrafts (Grski and Gerten 2007). GNSS augmentation systems
like Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) and Space Based Augmentation Sys-
tem (SBAS) improve the accuracy of GNSS positioning. GBAS mitigates a considerable
amount of the error in pseudo range that the aircraft encounters while takeoff and landing.
SBAS provides pseudo range corrections as well as the integrity bounds to recompense the
inaccuracies in GNSS, thereby boosting its performance during en-route aviation and sev-
eral such operations requiring precise navigation.
GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) is the Indian SBAS deployed for the
Indian airspace to ensure the safety of life in Indian civil aviation. It is implemented as a
joint venture by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the Airports Author-
ity of India (AAI). GAGAN identifies and calibrates the inaccuracies in GNSS and presents
the error compensations and confidence intervals to the receiver on the aircraft. GAGAN
has the capability to interoperate with other international SBAS systems like the US Wide
Area Augmentation System (WAAS), European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Ser-
vice (EGNOS), and Japan’s Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS).
GAGAN has 3 geostationary satellites providing a spatial coverage beyond the Indian Ter-
ritory. Dammalage et  al. (2017) conducted a performance analysis of GAGAN over the
Sri Lankan region and observed that 79% of observations have demonstrated an improved
accuracy in positioning. GAGAN has been operative since 30th December, 2013 for en-
route services providing an accuracy of 3 m followed by precision approach services since
21st April, 2014 (AIP Suppliment 2013). Surendra Sunda et al. carried out investigations
on the accuracy of GNSS and established that GAGAN receivers provided a considerable
enhancement in accuracy than standalone GNSS receivers even during acute ionospheric
scintillations. The amplitude and phase fluctuations in the trans-ionospheric GNSS signal
called scintillations manifest during the local post sunset hours and continue past midnight
in the low-latitude regions (Acharya and Majumdar 2019). The maximal inaccuracy over
a two month period was 25  m with standalone GNSS receiver and 5.5  m with GAGAN
receiver (Sunda et al. 2013).
Copious investigations have been performed to determine how the ionospheric gradi-
ents impact the GNSS accuracy (Bishop et al. 1998; Knight and Finn 1996; Nichols et al.
2000; Skone and Knudsen 2001). Acharya et  al. modeled a Near Real Time Grid Based
Ionospheric delay Model for providing error corrections in GAGAN (Acharya et al. 2007).
Rate of TEC Index (ROTI) is a favored tool for detecting fluctuations in TEC majorly due

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to the ease of its computation but it is also strongly dependent on the sliding window size,
the location of the GNSS receiver and the time interval between consecutive observations.
Xiaoqing Pi mentioned that ROTI is not susceptible to receiver local oscillator error and
detects ionospheric irregularity-induced fluctuations at both L1 and L2 carriers (Pi 2018).
Jacobsen showed that ROTI is imprecise in detecting TEC fluctuations when the magni-
tude of the plasma structure is incognito (Jacobsen 2014). The variation of ROTI tends to
be smoother for larger sampling intervals but it reveals more details for shorter sampling
intervals (Wei et al. 2019). In this paper the window size for ROTI calculation is taken as
5 min and the interval between two epochs is 60 s. Global ionospheric storms have almost
always been accompanied with ROTI enhancements of over 300% (Liu et al. 2018). Yang
Liu et al. (2016) showed that a high correlation coefficient was established between ROTI
and amplitude scintillation (S4) regardless of the ROTI sampling rate.
Raghunath et al. (2017) applied the maximum minimum eigen (MME) detector to indi-
cate the presence of Equatorial Plasma Bubbles (EPB) over the Indian subcontinent for the
year 2013 from 5 (International GNSS Service) IGS receivers. In this work, MME detec-
tor has been used to detect ionosphere induced anomalies in the navigation data from 24
GAGAN receivers for the year 2015. GAGAN data was analyzed using MME algorithm
to detect the occurrence of EPBs on St. Patrick’s day (17th March, 2015) which happened
to be the strongest geomagnetic storm observed during the solar cycle 24. This remarkable
storm occurred as a consequence of coronal mass ejection (CME) impact on the Earth’s
atmosphere (Jacobsen and Andalsvik 2016).

2 MME detector for ıonospheric plasma ırregularities

2.1 Estimation of Rate of TEC Index (ROTI)

Fluctuations in TEC can be quantified by ROTI, which is the standard deviation of the Rate
of TEC (ROT) as given by Eqs.  (1) and (2) where STEC(i) and STEC(i-1) are the Slant
Total electron Content (STEC) values at current (i) and previous (i-1) instants respectively.
Since ROTI is a derivative of TEC, it consequently eliminates the biases in TEC along
with the background trends and inadvertently accentuates the high frequency components
of TEC fluctuations.
STEC(i) − STEC(i − 1)
ROT(i) = (1)
epoch interval (min)

�
�
� ∑N � �2
� i=1 ROT(i) − ROT (2)
�
ROTI =
N

where N  = number of samples. Here, a 5 min wide sliding window has been used to evalu-
ate ROTI (N = 5).

2.2 Methodology of MME detector

Eigen values are a means to gauge the extent of variance within a set of values in dif-
ferent directions. The MME detector recognizes the presence of a plasma irregularity

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by evaluating the maximum and minimum eigen values from the covariance matrix of
the STEC observations pertaining to one epoch and comparing their ratio with a thresh-
old. This real time detection of irregularities would be very helpful for the operation of
GAGAN. Covariance of STEC indicates the deviation of every single STEC observation
from the mean STEC value. Eigen values are obtained by the Singular Value Decompo-
sition (SVD) of the covariance matrix and according to Principal Component Analysis
(PCA), the maximum eigen value gives the direction of strongest variation in STEC. By a
similar analogy, the minimum eigen value denotes the slightest variation of STEC. There-
fore, the decision criterion for detecting an ionospheric disturbance is taken as ratio of the
maximum to the minimum eigen values, which indicates the proportion of the plasma gra-
dient in the ionosphere. The presence of plasma irregularities consequently increase the
magnitude of the decision criterion prompting it to transcend a pre-established threshold
­ fa.
which itself is a function of the false alarm probability, P
In order to eliminate the multipath errors, the STEC observations concurring with the
elevation angles exceeding 40° have only been considered. Covx being the covariance
matrix, of the Ns STEC observations recorded at an epoch corresponding to elevation
angles above 40° is computed by Eq. (3)
NS
1 ∑
y(n)y† (n) (3)
( )
Covx NS =
NS n=1

where y(n) is the STEC matrix and y† (n) is its Hermitian matrix.
The minimum and maximum eigen values λmax and λmin of Covx are computed for every
epoch. The decision function D is shown in Eq. (4).

D = 𝜆max∕𝜆min (4)

When D > 𝜉 (threshold), a disturbance in the ionosphere is detected. D > 𝜉 indicate a quiet
ionosphere. 𝜉 is chosen to be the inverse of Chi square function (Raghunath and Venkata
Ratnam 2015, 2017) as indicated in Eq. (5)

(5)
( )
𝜉 = chi2inv 1 − Pfa , tb ∕ts ∗ ts ∕tb

where ts is the number of TEC samples, tb is the epoch interval and Pfa = 0.001.

3 Results and discussion

GNSS observations have been gathered from the 24 GAGAN TEC stations strategically
located to provide SBAS service to every part of India. The locations of GAGAN TEC
Stations on the map of India are shown in Fig. 1. Table 1 gives coordinates of the GAGAN
stations along with station codes.
The GAGAN data was processed independently for each station in real time for the year
2015. The data is in the easily understandable Microsoft Excel format. The epoch time,
elevation angle and Slant TEC (STEC) observations were used in the computation of the
decision function and the threshold value for the MME detector. The observations were
available 24 h a day with an epoch interval of 60 s.
The Kp-index is a three hourly measurement of global geomagnetic activity (http://wdc.
kugi.kyoto​-u.ac.jp/kp). Kp index varies over a 0–9 range which is directly proportional to

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40
GAGAN Stations
India

35

30
Geographic Latitude (deg)

25

20

15

10

5
65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100
Geographic Longitude (deg)

Fig. 1  Locations of GAGAN TEC stations

the geomagnetic activity. A Kp-index ranging from 0 to 4 indicates minimal geomagnetic

activity and that from 5 to 9 specify the severity of a geomagnetic storm. The ionospheric
disturbances have a direct correlation with the geomagnetic storms. To demonstrate the
performance of the MME detector, two different days with vastly different Kp index val-
ues have been considered. Panel 1 in Fig. 2 depicts the Kp-index values recorded on 17th
March, 2015 and 29th May, 2015. On 17th March, 2015 a severe geomagnetic storm (max-
imum Kp index of 8) is recorded and 29th May, 2015 had hardly any geomagnetic activity
(maximum Kp index of 2).
The Disturbance Storm Time (Dst) index is an hourly index (expressed in nanoteslas)
which measures the severity of  geomagnetic storms (http://wdc.kugi.kyoto​-u.ac.jp/dstdi​
r/). On the commencement of a geomagnetic storm, Dst index depicts a sudden increase
and as the storm intensifies, it decreases rapidly. Panel 2 in Fig.  2 shows the Dst indi-
ces on 17th March, 2015 and 29th May, 2015. The Dst index on 29th May, 2015, varied
from 9 to 14 nanotesla (nT) indicating a quiet ionosphere on that day whereas, on 17th
March, 2015, the Dst index increased from 13 to 37 nT as the storm was building up and
then rapidly descended to − 222 nT during the severe geomagnetic storm. The Dst index
values are in perfect correlation with the Kp-index values in Fig.  2. The F10.7 cm solar
flux index indicates the hourly averaged strength of solar activity at 2800 MHz (10.7 cm
wavelength) within a 100 MHz bandwidth. The solar flux index is expressed in solar flux
units (SFU), where 1 SFU = 10−22 W m−2 Hz−1. It includes the measurement of coronal and

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Table 1  Details of GAGAN stations with the geographic and the geomagnetic coordinates
S.no Station code Place Geo. latitude (°N) Geo. longi- Geom. lati- Geom.
tude (°E) tude (°N) longitude
(°E)

1 363 Trivandrum 8.49 76.9 − 0.34 148.96

2 211 Madurai 9.83 78.09 0.48 151.02
3 308 Portblair 11.65 92.73 1.58 164.9
4 213 Bangalore 12.95 77.68 3.53 150.28
5 526 Hubli 15.36 75.08 6.67 148.6
6 301 Hyderabad 17.45 78.47 8.4 151.68
7 316 Vishakapatnam 17.78 83.22 8.03 156.5
8 309 Mumbai 19.09 72.85 10.9 146.09
9 914 Bhubaneswar 20.25 85.8 10.88 158.62
10 315 Raipur 21.18 81.74 12.27 155.59
11 313 Kolkata 22.64 88.44 13.31 162.06
12 214 Ahmedabad 23.02 72.51 14.8 146.5
13 925 Ahmedabad 23.02 72.51 14.8 146.5
14 527 Ahmedabad 23.02 72.51 14.8 146.5
15 302 Bhopal 23.28 77.34 14.43 151.24
16 311 Aizwal 23.84 92.67 14.31 166.12
17 357 Gaya 24.74 84.94 15.59 158.88
18 915 Khajuraho 24.82 79.92 16.01 154.16
19 312 Guwahati 26.12 91.59 16.62 165.21
20 916 Jodhpur 26.26 73.05 18 147.83
21 310 Bagdogra 26.68 88.32 17.33 162.18
22 304 Lucknow 26.76 80.88 17.18 154.33
23 212 Delhi 28.56 77.22 19.39 151.71
24 305 Shimla 31.08 77.06 22.37 152

chromosphere emissions. On 17th March, 2015 113.2 SFU of F10.7 and 94.8 SFU on 29th
May, 2105 is recorded indicating the solar effects during the disturbed and quiet days.
The STEC and Amplitude Scintillation (S4) variations for the three randomly chosen
GAGAN TEC stations, namely 309 (Mumbai), 925 (Ahmedabad) and 212 (Delhi) have
been shown for 17th March and 29th May, 2015 in panels 3–8 in Fig.  2. Panels 3 and
4 depict the STEC and S4 observations at Mumbai (19.09°  N, 72.85°  E), panels and 6
show the observations recorded at Ahmedabad (23.02°  N, 72.51°  E) and panels 7 and 8
show the values observed at Delhi (28.56° N, 77.22° E) station. 17th March, 2015 was a
geomagnetically disturbed day featuring the strongest yet recorded geomagnetic storm of
the 24th solar cycle on the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
geomagnetic storm scale (Jacobsen and Andalsvik 2016) whereas 29th May, 2015 was a
geomagnetically quiet day.
From Fig. 2, it can be observed that the STEC and S4 values are much higher on 17th
March, 2015 than on 29th May, 2015. The STEC values observed at Mumbai station on
17th March ranged from 0.01 to 72.14 TECU with a mean STEC value of 26.3 TECU
whereas on 29th May, 2015, the observed STEC values ranged from 0.85 to 46.74 TECU
with a mean STEC values of 19.77 TECU. A greater variation in STEC on 17th March

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Fig. 2  Kp index, Dst index, STEC and S4 values on 17th March, 2015 and 29th May, 2015 with respect to
local time (hours)

corresponds to the geomagnetic disturbances on that day. The S4 values on 17th March
was observed to be in the range from 0.44 to 0.01 and those on 29th May ranged from 0.11
to 0.01. An S4 value exceeding 0.4 on 17th March also indicates a geomagnetic storm.
Figures  3, 4 and 5 show the outcome of the MME detector on 17th March and 29th
May, 2015 at the three GAGAN TEC stations Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi respectively.
From these figures, it can be seen that the MME detector identified ionospheric disturbance
on 17th March, 2015. Only one disturbance was detected on 29th May, 2015. Since MME
detector is very sensitive to the disturbances in the ionosphere, it could detect the presence
of disturbances even on a geomagnetically quiet day.
With a number of samples (­ts) taken as 5 and the epoch interval (­tb) of 1  min, the
decision threshold calculated from Eq. (5) was found to be 14.46. An ionospheric dis-
turbance event was detected at 18:58  h Local Time (LT) at Mumbai station when the
decision criterion calculated from Eq.  (4) exceeded the threshold as shown in Fig.  3.
Figures  4 and 5 show that the MME detector could identify ionospheric disturbance
events at 00:50 h and 00:78 h (LT) at Ahmedabad and Delhi stations respectively. Even

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100 100
Mumbai (19.09o N, 72.85o E) Mumbai (19.09o N, 72.85o E)

Average STEC
Average STEC

17th March, 2015 29th May, 2015

(TECU)
50
(TECU)

50

0 0
20 20
Decision Criterion Decision Criterion
Threshold Threshold

Criterion
Decision
Criterion

15 15
Decision

10 10

5 5
1 1
Decision

Decision
0 0
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 0 4 8 12 16 20 24
Local Time (Hours) Local Time (Hours)

Fig. 3  Decision of MME detector on 17th March and 29th May, 2015 for GAGAN TEC station at Mumbai

100 100
o
Ahmedabad (23.02 N, 72.51 E)
o Ahmedabad (23.02o N, 72.51o E)
Average STEC
Average STEC

17th March, 2015 29th May, 2015

(TECU)

50
(TECU)

50

0
0 20
400 Decision Criterion
Decision Criterion Threshold
300 15
Criterion
Decision

Threshold
Criterion
Decision

200
10
100
5
1 1
Decision
Decision

0 0
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 0 4 8 12 16 20 24
Local Time (Hours) Local Time (Hours)

Fig. 4  Decision of MME detector on 17th March and 29th May, 2015 for GAGAN TEC station at
Ahmedabad

on the geomagnetically quiet day of 29th May, 2015, an ionospheric disturbance was
detected at 05:40 h (LT) as shown in Fig. 5. All the disturbances were observed during
the post sunset hours, midnight hours and prior to the sunrise which is when the equato-
rial plasma bubbles manifest in the equatorial regions.
Figure  6 depicts the ROTI and S4 variation for PRN 2 on 17th March, 2015 at the
three GAGAN stations at Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi. Significant variations in
ROTI have been observed after mid night hours during which moderate scintillations
are recorded. At Mumbai station, the ROTI values ranged from 1.60 to 3.62 TECU/min
and S4 values ranged from 0.12 to 0.47 during the post sunset hours. A maximum ROTI
value of 4.21 TECU/min has been observed around 00.25 h (LT) at Mumbai station. At

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100 100
o o
Delhi (28.56 N, 77.22 E) Delhi (28.56 o N, 77.22o E)

Average STEC
Average STEC

17th March, 2015 29th May, 2015

(TECU)

(TECU)
50 50

0 0
60
20
Decision Criterion Decision Criterion
40 Threshold Threshold
Criterion

15
Decision

Criterion
Decision
20 10

0 5
1
1

Decision
Decision

0 0
0 4 8 12 16 20 24 0 4 8 12 16 20 24
Local Time (Hours) Local Time (Hours)

Fig. 5  Decision of MME detector on 17th March and 29th May, 2015 for GAGAN TEC station at Delhi

4 Mumbai
(19.09 o N, 72.85o E) ROTI (TECU/min)
S4 0.4
3

2
0.2

1
0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
0.6
Ahmedabad
ROTI (TECU/min)

6 (23.02 o N, 72.51o E)
0.4
4
S4

0.2
2

0 0
0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
0.4
Delhi
4 (28.56 o N, 77.22o E) 0.3

0.2
2
0.1

0 0
0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4
Local Time (Hours)

Fig. 6  ROTI and S4 values for 17th March, 2015 at the Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Delhi GAGAN TEC sta-
tions for PRN 2

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Ahmedabad station, the ROTI values varied from a minimum of 0.38 to a maximum
of 7.28 TECU/min and the observed S4 values ranged from 0.12 to 0.51 during the
midnight hours. At Delhi station, the ROTI values varied over the range from 0.26 to 1
TECU/min and S4 values varied from 0.04 to 0.4 during the early hours of 17th March,
2015.
The percentage of occurrence of the ionospheric disturbances detected by the MME
detector for the year 2015, at all the 24 GAGAN stations with respect to the geomag-
netic latitude, can be seen in Fig. 7. It shows that the highest percentage of ionospheric
disturbances were recorded during the vernal equinox (March and April) and the autum-
nal equinox (September and October) which is in correlation with Raghunath et  al.
(2017). The smallest number of events was recorded in the summer solstice (May and
June). Winter anomaly can be observed in the winter solstice (December and January)
(Raghunath and Venkata Ratnam 2015). It can also be observed from Fig. 7 that the %
of occurrence of disturbances is higher towards the anomaly crest. Though the number
of disturbances are spread through all months, the number of disturbances detected dur-
ing the vernal equinox are more than those detected during the autumnal equinox.
The outcome of MME detector has been compared with the ROTI values and the S4
observations at the 24 GAGAN stations for the year 2015. The mean ROTI was calcu-
lated over a window size 5 min. ROTI values above 1 TECU/min and S4 observations
exceeding 0.4 have been considered as disturbance events. Figures 8 and 9 show the %
of occurrence of the ionospheric disturbances from ROTI values and S4 observations
respectively, for the year 2015, at all the 24 GAGAN stations with respect to geomag-
netic latitude. The disturbances in Figs. 8 and 9 depict a higher % of occurrence during
the equinoxes and a decreased number of disturbance events during the solstices.
Also, the number of disturbance events during the vernal equinox is more than that
detected during the autumnal equinox which is in tune with disturbance events detected
by the MME detector. The ionospheric disturbances detected from ROTI are in good
correlation with the disturbances detected by the MME detector. Though the distur-
bances detected by MME are more spread out throughout the year as seen in Fig. 7 there
are clearly more disturbances during equinoxes than solstices. From Figs. 7, 8 and 9 it

Fig. 7  % of occurrence of the ionospheric disturbances at 24 GAGAN stations with respect to geomagnetic
latitude, for the year 2015 from MME detector

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6
Geomagnetic Latitude (degrees)
20
5

% of Occurrence
15 4

3
10
2
5
1

0 0
2 4 6 8 10 12
Month of Year

Fig. 8  % of occurrence of the ionospheric disturbances for the year 2015, at 24 GAGAN stations with
respect to geomagnetic latitude, from ROTI

6
Geomagnetic Latitude (degrees)

20 5

% of Occurrence
15 4

3
10
2

5
1

0 0
2 4 6 8 10 12
Month of Year

Fig. 9  % of occurrence of the ionospheric disturbances for the year 2015, at 24 GAGAN stations with
respect to geomagnetic latitude, from amplitude scintillation (S4) observations

is evident that MME detector is much more sensitive to ionospheric disturbances than
ROTI.

4 Conclusions

GAGAN has been conceptualized to suppliment the GNSS services over the Indian sub-
continent. The observations from 24 GAGAN TEC stations were analysed for the year
2015 using the MME algorithm to substantiate the ionospheric climatology over India. The

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outcomes of the MME detector were observed on the geomagenetically disturbed and quiet
days of 17th March and 29th May, 2015 respectively. The % of occurrence of the iono-
spheric disturbances for the year 2015, at the 24 GAGAN stations was also calculated from
ROTI and S4 and compared with the outcome of MME detector. Though the number dis-
turbances detected by MME were more than that from ROTI and S4, all the three outcomes
exhibited a similar trend. The climatologies from MME detector, ROTI and S4 showed an
increased ionospheric activity during equinoxes and a relatively quiet ionosphere during
solstices. The results from MME indicate high correlation with the pre-established equato-
rial ionospheric climatological models. The MME detector would elevate the performance
of GAGAN by accurately identifying the presence of plasma gradients in the equatorial
ionosphere. MME detector can be incorporated into GAGAN enhance its performance.

Acknowledgements  The present work has been carried out under the project titled ‘Development of Single
Frequency Ionospheric correction and plasma bubble detection algorithms using GPS Aided GEO Aug-
mented Navigation (GAGAN) and Navigation Indian Constellation (NAVIC) TEC observations’ sponsored
by NAVIC–GAGAN Utilization Program at Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, India. The authors
would like to acknowledge the Director, Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organization,
Ahmedabad, India for providing the data. They convey their sincere thanks to D.K. Das, SAC Director, Dr.
Nikhilesh, Deputy Director, Dr. Atul Shukla, SAC, ISRO, Dr. Rajat Acharya SAC-ISRO and Dr. Ashish
Shukla, SAC-ISRO. The views presented in the paper represent solely the opinion of the authors and should
be considered as research results not strictly related to the NAVIC or GAGAN project design.

Compliance with ethical standards 

Conflict of interest  On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of inter-
est.

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