A novel ionospheric mapping function modeling at regional scale using empirical orthogonal functions and GNSS data

The ionospheric mapping function (MF) converts the line-of-sight slant total electron content (STEC) into the vertical total electron content (VTEC) and vice versa, and it is an important function in the creation and use of ionospheric models. Most of the existing MFs are only related to satellite elevation angle, the accuracy is low, and it is necessary to establish a MF with higher accuracy. Therefore, this paper considers the differences of MF for different local time (LT) and DOY (day of year), and uses the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) STEC observation data from International GNSS Service (IGS) tracking stations in the northern hemisphere mid-latitude region in 2016–2020 to establish a novel MF model. First, we retrieve the mapping coefficient α_h for different LT and DOY, where the results show significant correlation with LT and DOY, and other periodic variations. Then, we use the empirical orthogonal functions (EOF) to decompose the time series, and the first four order EOF components can describe 98.31