Scintillations of the GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo signals at equatorial latitude

Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate

and Baylie Damtie²  Mogese Wassaie²  Norbert Jakowski¹  Stefan Gewies¹  Volker Wilken¹  Jens Berdermann¹  Nikolai Hlubek¹ 

[1] German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Communications und Navigation (IKN),Kalkhorstweg 53,17235Neustrelitz,Germany;Washera Geospace and Radar Science Laboratory, Bahir Dar University,Ethiopia

关键词: Monitoring;    Irregularities;    Disturbances;    Positioning system;    Ionosphere (equatorial);   

Others  :  1075715
DOI  :  doi:10.1051/swsc/2014020

 received in 2014-03-19, accepted in 2014-07-04,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Small scale ionospheric disturbances can lead to fluctuations of the received satellite signal, so-called signal scintillations. For global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) this reduces the positioning accuracy. Particular strong events can even lead to a loss of lock between satellite and receiver. All GNSS signals are affected by this phenomenon. The influence of the short scale disturbances on the different GNSS signals is expected to be different for each signal, since the signals are transmitted by different carrier frequencies and are constructed in different ways. In this paper, we compare the occurrence rate of signal scintillations between the different global navigation satellite systems and their different signal frequencies. In particular, we consider GPS L1, L2, and L5, GLONASS L1 and L2, and Galileo E1 and E5a. This analysis uses data from a high-rate GNSS station of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) placed in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia at 11°36′ N 37°23′ E. The station collects 50 Hz raw data from which the amplitude scintillation index S4 is calculated. The data has been collected for the whole year 2013. Since the number of strong scintillation events with S4 > 0.5 was smaller than expected, additionally weak scintillation events with S4 ≥ 0.25 are taken into account. An algorithm is used that provides a soft barrier for S4 ≥ 0.25. The resulting events are shown as daily and seasonal averages. Finally, the overall influence of short scale ionospheric disturbances in the form of signal scintillations on the GNSS signals is estimated.

【 授权许可】

   
© N. Hlubek et al., Published by EDP Sciences 2014

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