The ionosphere in low‐latitude regions has strong dynamics reflected by unique phenomena such as the equatorial ionization anomaly and equatorial plasma bubbles. Since the ionosphere can significantly affect space‐to‐Earth technologies, notably communication systems and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), the variations in ionospheric total electron content are of great interest to the space weather community and operators of these technologies. Motived by these issues, this paper proposes a new methodology to generate ionospheric delay maps using data from a network of GNSS monitoring stations. The methodology developed is suitable for low latitudes and has low level of complexity. It is based on the thin shell model of the ionosphere and uses groupings of measurements in time and space, triangulation, linear interpolation, and smoothing. The resulting maps show detailed coverage of large‐scale phenomena, like structures of equatorial plasma bubbles, in a way that other geophysical instruments are not able to provide. In a qualitative validation using a network of stations in Brazil, it was demonstrated that the maps were able to clearly identify plasma bubble structures also captured by other instruments, like scintillation monitors and all‐sky imager. The quantitative assessment showed errors less than 4 m in 99.9% of the times in days with high variability of the ionosphere and less than 1 m in a day with very low ionization. The quality of the generated maps with this new methodology using this density of data opens a wide range of possibilities for scientific and operational applications in low‐latitude ionosphere environment.

中文翻译：

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低纬度地区的区域电离层延迟映射

低纬度地区的电离层具有很强的动力学特性，被诸如赤道电离异常和赤道等离子泡等独特现象所反映。由于电离层会严重影响空对地技术，特别是通信系统和全球导航卫星系统（GNSS），因此电离层总电子含量的变化引起了空间天气界和这些技术运营商的极大兴趣。受这些问题的影响，本文提出了一种新方法，可使用来自GNSS监测站网络的数据生成电离层延迟图。所开发的方法适用于低纬度，并且复杂度较低。它基于电离层的薄壳模型，并使用时间和空间，三角测量，线性插值和平滑化的测量分组。生成的地图以其他地球物理仪器无法提供的方式，显示了对大范围现象的详细覆盖，例如赤道等离子气泡的结构。在巴西的一个气象站网络进行的定性验证中，证明了这些地图能够清楚地识别出其他仪器（例如闪烁监测仪和全天候成像仪）也捕获的血浆气泡结构。定量评估显示，在电离层高度可变的情况下，在99.9％的时间内误差小于4 m，而在电离层极低的情况下，一天的误差小于1 m。使用这种新的方法，利用这种数据密度生成的地图的质量为低纬度电离层环境中的科学和操作应用提供了广泛的可能性。