Simulation Studies for Ionospheric Scintillation

R. Kumar and P. Munjal

Abstract:	Small-scale variations in ionospheric electron density result in amplitude and phase scintillation (rapid variations) of the received GPS signal. It is known that these effects are more severe during times of peak solar activity and in equatorial and polar regions. Possible effects of this phenomenon on the overall performance will appear via degraded measurement accuracy obtained by the user receiver and by the reference receivers in Wide Area Augmentation systems such as FAA WAAS. Further effects are frequent receiver loss of lock and longer acquisition times. When some of the reference receivers lose lock, their measurements will be unavailable during these periods and cause degradation in the performance of the interpolation algorithms. Loss of lock at the user receiver will result in a reduction of the number of satellites in the navigation solution, which may result in degradation of the Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (RAIM) system. This paper presents an approach for assessing the potential impact of the ionospheric scintillation on the GPS receiver. One of the most important steps in this direction is to be able to simulate the statistical time series representing signal amplitude and phase under any specified ionospheric condition related to solar activity level, the level of earth’s magnetic field activity and the receiver location.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1998) June 1 - 3, 1998 The Adams Mark Hotel Denver, CO
Pages:	303 - 315
Cite this article:	Kumar, R., Munjal, P., "Simulation Studies for Ionospheric Scintillation," Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1998), Denver, CO, June 1998, pp. 303-315.
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