Radio occultations are commonly used to determine vertical profiles of ionospheric electron density and neutral atmospheric density from measurements of frequency. Previous work has developed expressions for how uncertainties in electron density and neutral density depend on uncertainty in frequency. However, these expressions assume that the relevant density decreases exponentially with increasing altitude, which limits their applicability. Here we develop alternative expressions for uncertainties in radio occultation experiments. We find that uncertainties depend on the vertical resolution. We validate these expressions on radio occultation observations by Mars Global Surveyor and MAVEN. These expressions can be used to perform preliminary design studies of future radio occultation experiments.

无线电掩星通常用于根据频率测量来确定电离层电子密度和中性大气密度的垂直剖面。先前的工作已经开发出关于电子密度和中性密度不确定性如何取决于频率不确定性的表达式。但是，这些表达式假定相关密度随高度的增加呈指数下降，这限制了它们的适用性。在这里，我们为无线电掩星实验开发了不确定性的替代表达式。我们发现不确定性取决于垂直分辨率。我们在火星全球测量师和MAVEN的无线电掩星观测中验证了这些表达式。这些表达式可用于进行未来无线电掩星实验的初步设计研究。