Impact of equatorial ionospheric irregularities on GNSS receivers using real and synthetic scintillation signals

Abstract

The impact of L-band equatorial ionospheric scintillation on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers is investigated in this paper using both real and synthetic scintillation data. To this end, various low-latitude data sets, recorded during the most recent solar maximum, are exploited in post-processing to develop and verify realistic simulation tools and evaluate GNSS receiver performance. A scintillation simulation model is implemented based on the phase screen formulation of Dr. Charles Rino (1979, 1982, and 2011) which allows oblique signal propagation in an anisotropic propagation medium with multiple irregularity layers (or phase screens) for multiple GNSS frequencies. The observed real scintillation parameters are used to drive GNSS signal simulations. The subsequent simulated GNSS signal time series are verified through comparison with real data for different signal tracking states including the most severe and challenging tracking scenarios. Using both real and synthetic data sets, the impact of scintillation on observation quality and receiver performance is evaluated in terms of probability of loss of phase and frequency lock, as well as the correlation of disturbed L-band signals transmitted by GNSS satellites on the same transionsopheric path.