Detecting Aliasing and Artifact Free Co-seismic and Tsunamigenic
Ionospheric Perturbations using GPS
Abstract
Ionospheric perturbations induced by tsunamis and earthquakes can be
used for tsunami early warning and remote sensing of earthquakes,
provided the perturbations are characterized properly to distinguish
them from the ones caused by other sources. The ionospheric
perturbations are increasingly being obtained from Global Positioning
System (GPS) based Total Electron Content (TEC) measurements sampled at
uniform time intervals. However, the sampling is not uniform in space.
The nonuniform spatial sampling along the GPS satellite tracks
introduces aliasing if it is not accounted while computing the
ionospheric perturbations. All the methods hitherto used to detect the
co-seismic and tsunamigenic ionospheric perturbations did not account
the nonuniform spatial sampling while computing these perturbations. In
addition, the residual approach used to obtain the perturbations by
detrending the TEC time series using high-order polynomial fit
introduces artifacts. These aliasing and artifacts corrupt amplitude,
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), phase, and frequency of ionospheric
perturbations which are vital to distinguish the perturbations induced
by tsunamis and earthquakes from the rest. We show that Spatio-Periodic
Leveling Algorithm (SPLA) successfully removes such aliasing and
artifacts. The efficiency of SPLA in removing the aliases and artifacts
is validated under two simulated scenarios, and using GPS observations
carried out during two natural disasters – the 2004 Indian Ocean
tsunami and the 2015 Nepal-Gorkha earthquake. We, further, studied the
severity of aliasing and artifacts on co-seismic and tsunamigenic
perturbations by analyzing its characteristics employing SNR,
spatiotemporal, and wavelet analyses. The results reveal that removal of
aliasing and artifacts using SPLA i) increases the SNR up to
~149% compared to the residual method and
~39% compared to the differential method, ii)
distinctly resolves signals from sharp static variations, and iii)
detects 50% more co-seismic ionospheric perturbations and 25% more
tsunami-induced ionospheric perturbations in the two events studied.
Cross-correlation of the perturbation time series obtained using the
residual method and SPLA reveals that aliasing and artifacts shift the
time of occurrence by -7.64 minutes to +4.21 minutes. Further, the
results show that the SPLA efficiently detects the ionospheric
perturbations at low elevation angles, thereby removes the need of
applying elevation cut-off and increases the area of ionospheric
exploration of a GPS receiver.