Michael Kirchner

Ionospheric scintillation monitoring and mitigation using a software GPS receiver

Ionospheric scintillation can degrade GPS performance in many ways. The scintillations are caused by ionospheric irregularities and affect the amplitude, phase, dispersion, and related parameters of GPS signals. Both L1 and L2 are affected in a somewhat uncorrelated fashion. All these factors contribute to the performance of GPS receivers under scintillating conditions and different receiver implementations behave differently. Adequate understanding of the scintillation related effects on GPS signals is essential in order to develop GPS receivers which could be immune from ionospheric scintillation related effects. The software GPS receiver developed by CRS facilitates advanced development of GPS receivers under different conditions. We present the results obtained with scintillating data collected over Ascension Island during March 2001. The raw signals (under scintillating conditions) have been processed using the software GPS receiver in order to derive the scintillation parameters. The receiver has been configured to provide stable operation during scintillation. This implementation provides configurations of receivers for ionospheric monitoring as well as for receivers that provide reliable operation during scintillating conditions.