Integrity investigation of global ionospheric TEC maps for high-precision positioning

Aside from the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) information, root-mean-square (RMS) maps are also provided as the standard deviations of the corresponding TEC errors in global ionospheric maps (GIMs). As the RMS maps are commonly used as the accuracy indicator of GIMs to optimize the stochastic model of precise point positioning algorithms, it is of crucial importance to investigate the reliability of RMS maps involved in GIMs of different Ionospheric Associated Analysis Centers (IAACs) of the International GNSS Service (IGS), i.e., the integrity of GIMs. We indirectly analyzed the reliability of RMS maps by comparing the actual error of the differential STEC (dSTEC) with the RMS of the dSTEC derived from the RMS maps. With this method, the integrity of seven rapid IGS GIMs (UQRG, CORG, JPRG, WHRG, EHRG, EMRG, and IGRG) and six final GIMs (UPCG, CODG, JPLG, WHUG, ESAG and IGSG) was examined under the maximum and minimum solar activity conditions as well as the geomagnetic storm period. The results reveal that the reliability of the RMS maps is significantly different for the GIMs from different IAACs. Among these GIMs, the values in the RMS maps of UQRG are large, which can be used as ionospheric protection level, while the RMS values in EHRG and ESAG are significantly lower than the realistic RMS. The rapid and final GIMs from CODE, JPL and WHU provide quite reasonable RMS maps. The bounding performance of RMS maps can be influenced by the location of the stations, while the influence of solar activity and the geomagnetic storm is not obvious.