Software for scaling and analysis of vertical incidence ionograms-ionoScaler

A software tool named ionoScaler (ionogram Scaler) was developed to carry out manual and automatic scaling of vertical incidence ionograms. Additionally, ionosonde Total Electron Content (ITEC) can be estimated by this tool through reconstructing the bottomside and topside electron density profiles of ionograms. Ionograms recorded at Puer (22.7°N, 101.05°E) and Wuhan (30.5°N, 114.3°E) were adopted to test features of the ionoScaler. Results show that the software tool performed well for scaling of ionograms and estimation of ITEC. However, bad quality ionograms would reduce the accuracy of automatic scaled (autoscaled) values. The ionoScaler presented in this paper will greatly expedite the interpretation of ionograms, and it is also an alternative method for estimation of TEC values. Moreover, this tool will be useful for research in the ionosphere and space weather.