This project aims at developing a prototype for an empirical model to forecast total electron content (TEC) variations across Portugal in response to changes in space weather conditions. Space weather is one of the main drivers of ionospheric disturbances which, in turn, can drastically affect the quality of the signal between a ground-based device and global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs). GNSS receivers themselves are a reliable source of ionospheric data, which can be used to estimate widely used ionospheric parameters such as the total electron content. The GNSS-derived TEC will be used as input ionospheric data for the model. Team members of the PRIME project have already tested a simplistic empirical model able to forecast TEC for Continental Portugal using space weather parameters as predictors. With this project, we plan to develop a more sophisticated model that is based on neural networks. This prototype will subsequently be adjusted and calibrated in order to be used across the entire Portuguese territory.

Total funding: € 47.743,19