Observing Ionospheric Profiles Using a Dual Frequency Translator

Alison Brown and Demis Caffery

Abstract:	Dual-frequency observations from the GPS satellites can provide highly accurate measurements of the ionospheric total-electron-content (TEC) along the signal path from the satellite to the receiver. By operating a network of ground stations, a model of the TEC as a function of ionospheric pierce points (IPP) can be built using ray- tracing techniques. The precision of the ionospheric model applied to computing slant range corrections, can be significantly improved by taking into account variations of the electron content with altitude. This 3- dimensional electron content model, can be best generated by including observations from both ground- based and space-based platforms, such as low earth orbit satellites. Currently, both commercial and military dual-frequency receivers exist that can be used to provide ionospheric measurements. However, both of these are relatively large and expensive to consider supporting wide-scale ground and space-based ionospheric observations. NAVSYS have developed a dual-frequency Ll/L2 translator that can provide a cost effective alternative to supporting GPS ionospheric profiling applications. This operates by remoting the sensor from the processing functions required to derive the dual-frequency observations. In this paper, the use of the NAVSYS dual-frequency translator for ionospheric profiling is explored and test results made using NAVSYS’ Ll/L2 GPS signal simulator are presented.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 9th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1996) September 17 - 20, 1996 Kansas City, MO
Pages:	605 - 613
Cite this article:	Brown, Alison, Caffery, Demis, "Observing Ionospheric Profiles Using a Dual Frequency Translator," Proceedings of the 9th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1996), Kansas City, MO, September 1996, pp. 605-613.
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