Pecularities of the Total Electron Content and Their Reflections in the Ionospheric Model

A number of wireless communication systems requires knowledge of real-time wave propagation conditions in the ionosphere. Widely used empirical ionospheric models provide median conditions and must be adapted to real-time parameters. One of the adaptation parameter is an experimental value of the critical frequency of the ionosphere foF2. It is shown that there are large discrepancies between model and experimental values of the total electron content in Chinese region after this adaptation. These discrepancies are due to differences between experimental and model values of tau where tau is an ionospheric slab thickness and can be determined by the correction factor K(tau). This factor is useful to get a global distribution of foF2 from TEC data and to fill gaps in foF2 data.