Ionospheric scintillation data detrending is reviewed in this paper. The attention is focused on satellite to ground links (mainly GPS) data. The problem of a fixed (“frozen”) cutoff frequency is pointed out. A possible explanation of the presence of “phase without amplitude” scintillations is given as a result of erroneous data detrending.

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Geosynchronous synthetic aperture radar (GEO SAR) has been studied for several decades but has not yet been implemented. This paper provides an overview of mission design, describing significant constraints (atmosphere, orbit, temporal stability of the surface and atmosphere, measurement physics, and radar performance) and then uses these to propose an approach to initial system design. The methodology encompasses all GEO SAR mission concepts proposed to date. Important classifications of missions are: 1) those that require atmospheric phase compensation to achieve their design spatial resolution; and 2) those that achieve full spatial resolution without phase compensation. Means of estimating the atmospheric phase screen are noted, including a novel measurement of the mean rate of change of the atmospheric phase delay, which GEO SAR enables. Candidate mission concepts are described. It seems likely that GEO SAR will be feasible in a wide range of situations, although extreme weather and unstable surfaces (e.g., water, tall vegetation) prevent 100% coverage. GEO SAR offers an exciting imaging capability that powerfully complements existing systems.

The Swarm satellites are equipped with state-of-the-art Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which are used for the precise geolocation of the magnetic and electric field instruments, as well as for the determination of the Earth's gravity field, the total electron content and low-frequency thermospheric neutral densities. The onboard GPS receivers deliver high-quality data with an almost continuous data rate. However, the receivers show a slightly degraded performance when flying over the geomagnetic poles and the geomagnetic equator, due to ionospheric scintillation. Furthermore, with only eight channels available for dual-frequency tracking, the amount of collected GPS tracking data is relatively low compared with various other missions. Therefore, several modifications have been implemented to the Swarm GPS receivers. To optimise the amount of collected GPS data, the GPS antenna elevation mask has slowly been reduced from 10° to 2°. To improve the robustness against ionospheric scintillation, the bandwidths of the GPS receiver tracking loops have been widened. Because these modifications were first implemented on Swarm-C, their impact can be assessed by a comparison with the close flying Swarm-A satellite. This shows that both modifications have a positive impact on the GPS receiver performance. The reduced elevation mask increases the amount of GPS tracking data by more than 3 %, while the updated tracking loops lead to around 1.3 % more observations and a significant reduction in tracking losses due to severe equatorial scintillation. The additional observations at low elevation angles increase the average noise of the carrier phase observations, but nonetheless slightly improve the resulting reduced-dynamic and kinematic orbit accuracy as shown by independent satellite laser ranging (SLR) validation. The more robust tracking loops significantly reduce the large carrier phase observation errors at the geomagnetic poles and along the geomagnetic equator and do not degrade the observations at midlatitudes. SLR validation indicates that the updated tracking loops also improve the reduced-dynamic and kinematic orbit accuracy. It is expected that the Swarm gravity field recovery will benefit from the improved kinematic orbit quality and potentially also from the expected improvement of the kinematic baseline determination and the anticipated reduction in the systematic gravity field errors along the geomagnetic equator. Finally, other satellites that carry GPS receivers that encounter similar disturbances might also benefit from this analysis.

1] Rapid fluctuations in the amplitude and phase of a transionospheric radio signal caused by small scale plasma density irregularities in the ionosphere are known as scintillation. Scintillation can seriously impair a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) receiver tracking performance, thus affecting the required levels of availability, accuracy and integrity, and consequently the reliability of modern day GNSS based applications. This paper presents an analysis of correlation between scintillation levels and tracking performance of a GNSS receiver for GPS L1C/A, L2C and GLONASS L1, L2 signals. The analyses make use of data recorded over Presidente Prudente (22.1 S, 51.4 W, dip latitude $12.3 S) in Brazil, a location close to the Equatorial Ionisation Anomaly (EIA) crest in Latin America. The study presents for the first time this type of correlation analysis for GPS L2C and GLONASS L1, L2 signals. The scintillation levels are defined by the amplitude scintillation index, S 4 and the receiver tracking performance is evaluated by the phase tracking jitter. Both S 4 and the phase tracking jitter are estimated from the post correlation In-Phase (I) and Quadra-Phase (Q) components logged by the receiver at a high rate. Results reveal that the dependence of the phase tracking jitter on the scintillation levels can be represented by a quadratic fit for the signals. The results presented in this paper are of importance to GNSS users, especially in view of the forthcoming high phase of solar cycle 24 (predicted for 2013).Citation: Sreeja, V., M. Aquino, Z. G. Elmas, and B. Forte (2012), Correlation analysis between ionospheric scintillation levels and receiver tracking performance, Space Weather, 10, S06005,