A Reconstruction Method for Ionospheric f_oF₂ Spatial Mapping over Australia

To improve the accuracy of predicting the ionospheric critical frequency of the F2 layer (f(o)F(2)), a reconstruction method for the spatial map of the ionospheric f(o)F(2) based on modified geomagnetic dip coordinates is proposed. Based on the strong correlation between the ionospheric f(o)F(2) and geomagnetic coordinates, the variation function of ionospheric distance is built. In the end, the spatial map of the ionospheric f(o)F(2) is predicted by solving the Kriging equation. The results show that the regional characteristics of the ionospheric f(o)F(2) analyzed by the proposed method are consistent with the observations. Compared with the reconstructed value of f(o)F(2) using traditional geographic coordinates, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) in high solar activity years decreased by 0.43 MHz, and the relative RMSE decreased by 5.48%; The RMSE decreased by 0.35 MHz during low solar activity which is 5.99% lower to relative RMSE. The research results provide support for high-frequency communication frequency selection.