Accuracy Analysis of Ionospheric Delay of Low Earth Orbit Satellites by using NeQuick G Model

Since the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal received from the low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite is only affected by the upper ionosphere, the magnitude of the ionospheric delay of Global Positioning System (GPS) signal received from ground user is different. Therefore, the ground-based two-dimensional ionospheric model cannot be applied to LEO satellites. The NeQuick model used in Galileo provides the ionospheric delay according to the user's altitude, so it can be used in the ionospheric model of the LEO satellites. However, the NeQuick model is not suitable for space receivers because of the high computational cost. A simplified NeQuick model with reduced computing time was recently presented. In this study, the computing time of the NeQuick model and the simplified NeQuick model was analyzed based on the GPS Klobuchar model. The NeQuick and simplified NeQuick model were applied to the GNSS data from GRACE-B, Swarm-C, and GOCE satellites to analyze the performance of the ionospheric correction and positioning. The difference in computing time between the NeQuick and simplified NeQuick model was up to 90%, but the difference in ionospheric accuracy was not as large as within 4.5%.