The effects of ionospheric irregularities on the navigational receivers and its mitigation

Abstract

The performance of navigational receivers using satellite-based navigation technology can be severely affected by the presence of time-varying electron-density fluctuations in the ionosphere which can cause amplitude and phase perturbations at the receiver resulting in loss of phase lock at the carrier tracking loop due to cycle slip and hence unavailability of the navigation services. This paper studies the effects of amplitude and phase fluctuations at high latitudes due to the irregular ionosphere and, their effects on the receiver performance by using real time raw data from the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) satellites. The paper also suggest the use of adaptive software-based receiver model or modified hardware receivers to mitigate the effects of amplitude and phase fluctuations due to irregular ionosphere.