Classification of the equatorial plasma bubbles using convolutional neural network and support vector machine techniques

Abstract Equatorial plasma bubble (EPB) is a phenomenon characterized by depletions in ionospheric plasma density being formed during post-sunset hours. The ionospheric irregularities can lead to disruptions in trans-ionospheric radio systems, navigation systems and satellite communications. Real-time detection and classification of EPBs are crucial for the space weather community. Since 2020, the Prachomklao radar station, a very high frequency (VHF) radar station, has been installed at Chumphon station (Geographic: 10.72° N, 99.73° E and Geomagnetic: 1.33° N) and started to produce radar images ever since. In this work, we propose two real-time plasma bubble detection systems based on support vector machine techniques. Two designs are made with the convolutional neural network (CNN) and singular value decomposition (SVD) used for feature extraction, the connected to the support vector machine (SVM) for EPB classification. The proposed models are trained using quick look (QL) plot images from the VHF radar system at the Chumphon station, Thailand, in 2017. The experimental results show that the combined CNN-SVM model, using the RBF kernel, achieves the highest accuracy of 93.08% while the model using the polynomial kernel achieved an accuracy of 92.14%. On the other hand, the combined SVD-SVM models yield the accuracies of 88.37% and 85.00% for RBF and polynomial kernels of SVM, respectively. Graphical Abstract