The NeQuick ionosphere electron density model

The NeQuick model is used as background model for the real-time update and mapping of the ionosphere electron density and frequency in the European grid (lat = 34 ÷ 60, lon = -5 ÷ 40). The NeQuick 2 is the latest version of the NeQuick ionosphere electron density model developed at the Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory (now T/ICT4D Laboratory) of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) - Trieste, Italy with the collaboration of the Institute for Geophysics, Astrophysics and Meteorology of the University of Graz, Austria. It gives the electron density for positions in the ionosphere with height, geocentric latitude, geocentric longitude as coordinates on a spherical earth. The model values depend on solar activity (given by monthly-mean sunspot number) season (month) and time (Universal Time UT). The mapping scheme applied uses the fitting interpolation technique: a specific technique that fits the background model to the set of measurements (Stanislawska et al., 2000, 2001, Nava et al. 2008).