Evaluation of Ionospheric Scintillation in GNSS Radio Occultation Measurements and Simulations

Abstract

Like any other system relying on transionospheric propagation, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Radio Occultation (GNSS‐RO) is affected by ionospheric conditions during measurements. Regions of plasma irregularities in F region create abrupt gradients in the distribution of ionized particles. Radio signals propagated through such regions suffer from constructive and destructive contributions in phase and amplitude, known as scintillations. Different approaches have been proposed in order to model and reproduce the wave propagation through ionospheric irregularities. We present simulations considering single‐slope power law model of irregularities integrated with Multiple Phase Screen (MPS) propagation. In this work, the capability of the scintillation model to reproduce features in low‐latitude MetOp measurements in the early hours of DOY 76, 2015 is evaluated. Power spectral density (PSD) analysis, scintillation index, decorrelation time, and standard deviation of neutral bending angle are considered in the comparison between the simulations and RO measurements. The results demonstrate the capability of the simulator to replicate an equivalent error contribution to the neutral bending angle measurement in cases of moderate to strong scintillation.

Study of the Ionospheric Scintillation Radio Propagation Characteristics with Cosmic Observations

“…Most studies on radio propagation under ionospheric scintillation have concentrated on ground-based receivers, in which the trans-ionospheric signals propagated in spaceground directions [32]. However, there is also another situation in which trans-ionospheric signals propagate from space to the receiver installed on low earth orbit (LEO) satellites, for instance, in the space-LEO directions [33,34].…”

Anisotropic scintillation indices for weak scattering regime

“…Remote sensing via the radio occultation methods might also be affected by scintillation. Moderate and strong scintillation contribute to significant errors in the neutral bending angle measurements (Yakovlev et al, 1995;Ludwig−Barbosa et al, 2020).…”

Supervised Detection of Ionospheric Scintillation in Low-Latitude Radio Occultation Measurements

“…In the context of GNSS-RO, studies have considered to a large extent TEC, electron density profiles, S 4 index and other complementary geomagnetic indices in analyses and modelling of the ionospheric conditions and regions of irregularities. Few publications have investigated ionospheric scintillation by using intensity and phase spectral analysis and phase scintillation index [41,42].…”

“…The influence of the ionospheric scintillation in the F-layer on the bending angle standard deviation and the simulation of the effects observed in a limited set of three occultations when assuming a monotonic power law model has been previously investigated [42]. In this study, a data set of low-latitude occultations performed by the GNSS Receiver for Atmospheric Sounding (GRAS) on board of the Meteorological Operational (MetOp) satellites is created to train an automatic detection model of F-layer scintillations.…”