Martian Ionosphere Electron Density Prediction Using Bagged Trees

The availability of Martian atmospheric data provided by several Martian missions broadened the opportunity to investigate and study the conditions of the Martian ionosphere. As such, ionospheric models play a crucial part in improving our understanding of ionospheric behavior in response to different spatial, temporal, and space weather conditions. This work represents an initial attempt to construct an electron density prediction model of the Martian ionosphere using machine learning. The model targets the ionosphere at solar zenith ranging from 70 to 90 degrees, and as such only utilizes observations from the Mars Global Surveyor mission. The performance of different machine learning methods was compared in terms of root mean square error, coefficient of determination, and mean absolute error. The bagged regression trees method performed best out of all the evaluated methods. Furthermore, the optimized bagged regression trees model outperformed other Martian ionosphere models from the literature (MIRI and NeMars) in finding the peak electron density value, and the peak density height in terms of root-mean-square error and mean absolute error.Comment: The peer-reviewed paper is available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECTA57148.2022.999050

Amplitude Scintillation Forecasting Using Bagged Trees

Electron density irregularities present within the ionosphere induce significant fluctuations in global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals. Fluctuations in signal power are referred to as amplitude scintillation and can be monitored through the S4 index. Forecasting the severity of amplitude scintillation based on historical S4 index data is beneficial when real-time data is unavailable. In this work, we study the possibility of using historical data from a single GPS scintillation monitoring receiver to train a machine learning (ML) model to forecast the severity of amplitude scintillation, either weak, moderate, or severe, with respect to temporal and spatial parameters. Six different ML models were evaluated and the bagged trees model was the most accurate among them, achieving a forecasting accuracy of $81\%$ using a balanced dataset, and $97\%$ using an imbalanced dataset.Comment: This paper was presented at IGARSS 2022, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. doi: 10.1109/IGARSS46834.2022.988338