Development and use of a GPS ionospheric scintillation monitor

Beach, T. L.; Kintner, P. M.

doi:10.1109/36.921409

Cited by 94 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Amplitude scintillation measurements used in this study were made by a scintillation monitor developed by Cornell University (Beach and Kintner 2001) and deployed in Brazil as a part of the ionospheric scintillation network of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias-INPE. The Cornell Scintillation Monitor (CSM or SCINTMON) was built using a GEC-Plessey GPS card with special firmware.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…14. We must point out that the duration of a fading event depends on the velocity of the ionospheric piercing point with respect to the geomagnetic field and to the velocity of the ionospheric irregularities (Aarons et al 1980;Aarons 1982;Kintner et al 2001Kintner et al , 2004. Therefore, a non-static receiver, for instance, moving in the geomagnetic eastward direction is more likely to observe more signal fades with longer durations than those Fig.…”

Section: Fading Characteristics and Cycle Slipsmentioning

confidence: 96%

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Analysis of the Characteristics of Low-Latitude GPS Amplitude Scintillation Measured During Solar Maximum Conditions and Implications for Receiver Performance

et al. 2011

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Ionospheric scintillations are fluctuations in the phase and/or amplitude of trans-ionospheric radio signals caused by electron density irregularities in the ionosphere. A better understanding of the scintillation pattern is important to make a better assessment of GPS receiver performance, for instance. Additionally, scintillation can be used as a tool for remote sensing of ionospheric irregularities. Therefore, the study of ionospheric scintillation has both scientific as well as technological implications. In the past few years, there has been a significant advance in the methods for analysis of scintillation and in our understanding of the impact of scintillation on GPS receiver performance. In this work, we revisit some of the existing methods of analysis of scintillation, propose an alternative approach, and apply these techniques in a comprehensive study of the characteristics of amplitude scintillation. This comprehensive study made use of 32 days of high-rate (50 Hz) measurements made by a GPS-based scintillation monitor located in São José dos Campos, Brazil (23.2°S, 45.9°W, -17.5°dip latitude) near the Equatorial Anomaly during high solar flux conditions. The variability of the decorrelation time (s 0 ) of scintillation patterns is presented as a function of scintillation severity index (S 4 ). We found that the values of s 0 tend to decrease with the increase of S 4 , confirming the results of previous studies. In addition, we found that, at least for the measurements made during this campaign, averaged values of s 0 (for fixed S 4 index values) did not vary much as a function of local time. Our results also indicate a significant impact of s 0 in the GPS carrier loop performance for S 4 C 0.7. An alternative way to compute the probability of cycle slip that takes into account the fading duration time is also presented. The results of this approach show a 38% probability of cycle slips during strong scintillation scenarios (S 4 close to 1 and s 0 near 0.2 s). Finally, we present results of an analysis of the individual amplitude fades observed in our set of measurements. This analysis suggests that users operating GPS receivers with C/N 0 thresholds around 30 dB-Hz and above can be affected significantly by low-latitude scintillation.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fading Characteristics and Cycle Slipsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Analysis of the Characteristics of Low-Latitude GPS Amplitude Scintillation Measured During Solar Maximum Conditions and Implications for Receiver Performance

et al. 2011

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“…They reported that, for the most severe of the high-latitude storms they examined, the tracking performance of the codeless receiver was significantly degraded, although the effect on the L1 tracking performance for both types of receiver was negligible. Beach and Kintner (2001) describe the development of a GPS ionospheric scintillation monitor based on a commercially available GPS development system. Their receiver is modified to measure signal strength at a sample rate of 50 samples per second.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

GPS scintillation over the European Arctic during the November 2004 storms

Meggs¹,

Mitchell²,

Honary³

2008

GPS Solut

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Small-scale irregularities in the background electron density of the ionosphere can cause rapid fluctuations in the amplitude and phase of radio signals passing through it. These rapid fluctuations are known as scintillation and can cause a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver to lose lock on a signal. This could compromise the integrity of a safety of life system based on GPS, operating in auroral regions. In this paper, the relationship between the loss of lock on GPS signals and ionospheric scintillation in auroral regions is explored. The period from 8 to 14 November 2004 is selected for this study, as it includes both geomagnetically quiet and disturbed conditions. Phase and amplitude scintillation are measured by GPS receivers located at three sites in Northern Scandinavia, and correlated with losses of signal lock in receivers at varying distances from the scintillation receivers. Local multi-path effects are screened out by rejection of lowelevation data from the analysis. The results indicate that losses of lock are more closely related to rapid fluctuations in the phase rather than the amplitude of the received signal. This supports the idea, suggested by Humphreys et al. (2005) (performance of GPS carrier tracking loops during ionospheric scintillations. Proceedings Internationsl Ionospheric Effects Symposium 3-5 May 2005), that a wide loop bandwidth may be preferred for receivers operating at auroral latitudes. Evidence from the Imaging Riometer for Ionospheric Studies (IRIS) appears to suggest that, for this particular storm, precipitation of particles in the D/E regions may be the mechanism that drives the rapid phase fluctuations in the signal.

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“…The digisonde data that were employed in this study were obtained at the São Luís station. The GNSS receivers are based on the GEC-Plessey GPS Builder-2 development system [Beach and Kintner, 2001] with an acquisition rate of 50 Hz and an operating frequency of 1575.42 MHz (L1 frequency). The S4 index is defined as the standard deviation of the observations of the signal intensity normalized by the received average intensity, being calculated as:…”

Section: The Scintillation Databasementioning

confidence: 99%

Correlation analysis between the occurrence of ionospheric scintillation at the magnetic equator and at the southern peak of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly

et al. 2014

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Ionospheric scintillation refers to amplitude and phase fluctuations in radio signals due to electron density irregularities associated to structures named ionospheric plasma bubbles. The phenomenon is more pronounced around the magnetic equator where, after sunset, plasma bubbles of varying sizes and density depletions are generated by plasma instability mechanisms. The bubble depletions are aligned along Earth's magnetic field lines, and they develop vertically upward over the magnetic equator so that their extremities extend in latitude to north and south of the dip equator. Over Brazil, developing bubbles can extend to the southern peak of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly, where high levels of ionospheric scintillation are common. Scintillation may seriously affect satellite navigation systems, such as the Global Navigation Satellite Systems. However, its effects may be mitigated by using a predictive model derived from a collection of extended databases on scintillation and its associated variables. This work proposes the use of a classification and regression decision tree to perform a study on the correlation between the occurrence of scintillation at the magnetic equator and that at the southern peak of the equatorial anomaly. Due to limited size of the original database, a novel resampling heuristic was applied to generate new training instances from the original ones in order to improve the accuracy of the decision tree. The correlation analysis presented in this work may serve as a starting point for the eventual development of a predictive model suitable for operational use.

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Development and use of a GPS ionospheric scintillation monitor

Cited by 94 publications

References 16 publications

Analysis of the Characteristics of Low-Latitude GPS Amplitude Scintillation Measured During Solar Maximum Conditions and Implications for Receiver Performance

Analysis of the Characteristics of Low-Latitude GPS Amplitude Scintillation Measured During Solar Maximum Conditions and Implications for Receiver Performance

GPS scintillation over the European Arctic during the November 2004 storms

Correlation analysis between the occurrence of ionospheric scintillation at the magnetic equator and at the southern peak of the Equatorial Ionization Anomaly

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