A New Method for Reconstruction of Regional Three-Dimensional Electron Density Distributions Using AI-Based Data Assimilation Method and Incoherent Scatter Radar Measurements

Abstract

The ionosphere's dynamic structure affects electromagnetic radiation by altering radio wave propagation, impacting daily communications. The characteristics of the ionosphere are primarily characterized by electron density parameters. This paper proposes a method to construct Three-Dimensional (3-D) electron density distributions with arbitrary spatiotemporal resolution in ISR observational regions. The method, termed Artificial Intelligence-based data assimilation (AI-Assim), integrates data assimilation directly into a neural network. It assimilates electron density from the IRI-2020 model to fill ISR observation gaps. Experiments conducted using the Sanya Incoherent Scatter Radar (SYISR) in Hainan, China, successfully constructed a 3-D electron density structure over the region, with a 0.2° latitude/longitude resolution and 1 km height resolution. The method's effectiveness was validated by calculating the mean square error and comparing the results with digisonde measurements.