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In this paper, a post-processing method to automatically detect and characterize ionospheric plasma irregularities in low latitudes has been proposed. When monitoring the ionosphere using the total electron content (TEC) calculated by GNSS beacons, plasma bubbles appear as TEC depletions and plasma masses appear as TEC enhancements. Therefore, plasma irregularities can be detected and characterized by identifying depletions and enhancements of TEC. The method is based on an analysis of the rate of change of relative total electron content (RTEC), followed by a high-order polynomial fitting strategy to extract short-time series in which TEC depletion (enhancement) does not occur. General characteristics of ionospheric TEC depletions or enhancements, such as start and end times and magnitude, can be automatically provided by the method. The ionospheric irregularity seeker based on GNU Octave programming language has been developed based on this method, and the analysis of beacons data of different stations in low latitudes with main sampling rates (e.g., 1s, 15s, 30S) of Beidou, GPS, and GLONASS has been realized. The reliability and practicability of the method are verified by using the GNSS measurement data provided by the HKCL and HKQT stations in the equatorial anomaly region of China from August 2013 to December 2015. It was also used to analyze the measurement data from HKCL stations and HKQT stations in October 2023. Compared with previous studies done with different techniques and measurements, these results showed clear agreement.
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