The altitude structure restoration of an electronic concentration of the Earth 
ionosphere by radio translucence method 
 
V.M. Smirnov, E.V. Smirnova, *P.Cilliers, Z.Katamzi 
 
Institute of a Radioengineering and Electronics of the Russian Academy of 
Sciences 
141190, Fryazino, sq. B.A. Vvedenskogo, 1 
vsmirnov@ire.rssi.ru 
*Hermanus Magnetic Observatory 
P O Box 32, Hermanus 7200, South Africa 
pjcilliers@hmo.ac.za 
 
High technical perfection of satellite systems GLONASS and GPS has led to such 
areas of their applicability which have surpassed the initial purposes of the 
navigating problems solving. Now they allow solving not only the tasks of space 
navigation precision and geodesy, similar on methodology, but also a number of 
others, in particular, tasks of the remote radiophysical sounding of the 
ionosphere. 
Alongside with the traditional application of global navigating satellite 
systems for measurements of the total electron content the radio translucence 
method allows to determine the electron concentration distribution of the 
ionosphere in near-real time of any place on the globe on the observation from 
only one ground point. This is very important for the removed and hard-to-reach 
areas. A distinctive feature of the given method is in its realization which 
does not require the equipment of special points of navigating signals 
registration. 
At presence a dual frequency navigating receiver and a computer with a software 
for data processing the radio translucence method can be realized in field 
conditions, onboard airplanes and sea ships which is rather important for data 
organization of the ionosphere in planetary scale. Thus, an operative range of 
such a receiver covers an area of the radius more than 1000 km. 
The simulation results have shown that a root-mean-square error of the 
determination of a high-altitude structure of electron concentration of the 
Earth ionosphere does not exceed 0,02 NU. The divergence between the model value 
in the maximum of layer F2 of the ionosphere and restored value makes 0,014 NU. 
The results of the comparison have shown that the restored structure of the 
altitude distribution of electron concentration of the Earth ionosphere match 
well to the digital sounder data up to the height of a maximum of layer F2. For 
the comparison Russian (Troizk, IZMIRAN) and South African (Grahamstown) 
ionosondes data were used.