Inverting ionospheric D-region electron density pro-file from riometer measurement

• Main Author: Tegegne, Malefia
• Other Authors: Lappeenrannan teknillinen yliopisto, Teknillinen tiedekunta, Matematiikan ja fysiikan laitos / Lappeenranta University of Technology, LUT School of Technology, Department of Mathematics and Physics
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: riometer; KAIRA; absorption; Markov chain monte carlo method; Kilpisjärvi
• Online Access: http://lutpub.lut.fi/handle/10024/104309

The aim of this work is to invert the ionospheric electron density profile from Riometer (Relative Ionospheric opacity meter) measurement. The newly Riometer instrument KAIRA (Kilpisjärvi Atmospheric Imaging Receiver Array) is used to measure the cosmic HF radio noise absorption that taking place in the D-region ionosphere between 50 to 90 km. In order to invert the electron density profile synthetic data is used to feed the unknown parameter Neq using spline height method, which works by taking electron density profile at different altitude. Moreover, smoothing prior method also used to sample from the posterior distribution by truncating the prior covariance matrix. The smoothing profile approach makes the problem easier to find the posterior using MCMC (Markov Chain Monte Carlo) method.