To first order, the ionospheric radio propagation effect is proportional to TEC and inversely proportional to the radio frequency f. The ionospheric phase delay compared to propagation in vacuum reads:[2]: eq. (9.41)
while the ionospheric group delay has the same magnitude but opposite sign:
The ionospheric delay is normally expressed in units of length (meters), assuming a delay duration (in seconds) multiplied by the vacuum speed of light (in m/s).
The proportionality constant κ reads:[2]: eq.(9.21), (9.20), (9.19), (9.14) [3]
where q, me, re are the electron charge, mass, and radius, respectively; c is the vacuum speed of light and ϵ0 is the vacuum permittivity. The value of the constant is approximately κ ≈ 40.308193 m3·s−2;[4][5] the units can be expressed equivalently as m·m2·Hz2 to highlight the cancellation involved in yielding delays τ in meters, given f in Hz and TEC in m−2.
Typical daytime values of TEC are expressed on the scale from 0 to 100 TEC units. However, very small variations of 0.1-0.5 TEC units can be also extracted under the assumption of relatively constant observational biases.[6] These small TEC variations are related to medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs).[7] These ionospheric disturbances are primarily generated by gravity waves propagating upward from lower atmosphere. [8]