Ionospheric irregularities at Antarctic using GPS measurements

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to study the behaviour of the ionospheric scintillation at high latitude during geomagnetically quiet and disturbed conditions which is one of the most relevant themes in the space weather studies. Scintillation is a major problem in navigation application using GPS and in satellite communication at high latitudes. Severe amplitude fading and strong scintillation affect the reliability of GPS navigational system and satellite communication. To study the effects of the ionospheric scintillations, GPS receiver installed at Antarctic station Maitri (Geog. 70.76°S; 11.74°E) was used. The data is collected by using GISTM 4004A, NOVATEL'S GPS receiver during March 2008. Studies show that percentage occurrence of phase scintillation is well correlated with geomagnetic activity during the observation period. The result also shows that very intense scintillations can degrade GPS based location determination due to loss of lock of satellites. These findings indicate that the dependence of scintillations and irregularity occurrence on geomagnetic activity is associated with the magnetic local time (MLT). Large number of patches are reported and their activity depends on the magnetic activity index. © Indian Academy of Sciences.