An Improved Iterative Algorithm for 3-D Ionospheric Tomography Reconstruction

The computerized ionospheric tomography usually involves solving an ill-posed inversion problem. The sparsity of Global Positioning System (GPS) stations and the limitation of projection angles lead to insufficient data acquisition, thereby preventing the accurate reconstruction of ionospheric-electron-density distributions. In this paper, we investigate and propose a 3-D iterative reconstruction algorithm based on the minimization of total variation under quiescent and disturbed ionospheric conditions. Numerical experiments on GPS simulation data and real data are discussed. In contrast to the improved algebraic reconstruction technique, the proposed algorithm exhibits significantly reconstruction accuracy.