Geomagnetic storm effects on GPS based navigation

Abstract

Abstract. The energetic events on the sun, solar wind and subsequent effects on the Earth's geomagnetic field and upper atmosphere (ionosphere) comprise space weather. Modern navigation systems that use radio-wave signals, reflecting from or propagating through the ionosphere as a means of determining range or distance, are vulnerable to a variety of effects that can degrade the performance of the navigational systems. In particular, the Global Positioning System (GPS) that uses a constellation of earth orbiting satellites are affected due to the space weather phenomena.Studies made during two successive geomagnetic storms that occurred during the period from 8 to 12 November 2004, have clearly revealed the adverse affects on the GPS range delay as inferred from the Total Electron Content (TEC) measurements made from a chain of seven dual frequency GPS receivers installed in the Indian sector. Significant increases in TEC at the Equatorial Ionization anomaly crest region are observed, resulting in increased range delay during the periods of the storm activity. Further, the storm time rapid changes occurring in TEC resulted in a number of phase slips in the GPS signal compared to those on quiet days. These phase slips often result in the loss of lock of the GPS receivers, similar to those that occur during strong(>10 dB) Lband scintillation events, adversely affecting the GPS based navigation.

GPS-TEC variations during low solar activity period (2007–2009) at Indian low latitude stations

“…TEC variations with local time, season, and solar activity have been studied extensively over the past few decades (Warnant 2000;Gupta and Singh 2000;Wu et al 2008;Kumar and Singh 2009;Venkatesh et al 2011). The variation of TEC during space weather events such as a geomagnetic storm in Indian region is studied by recent workers at Udaipur (Dashora et al 2009), at Rajkot (Bagiya et al 2009), at Varanasi (Kumar and Singh 2010) at Bhopal (Trivedi et al 2011) and also at other different stations namely Trivandrum, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Raipur, Bhopal, Delhi and Shimla (Rama Rao et al 2009). …”

Storm time response of GPS-derived total electron content (TEC) during low solar active period at Indian low latitude station Varanasi

“…Recently, the GPS measurements were used to study the effect of geomagnetic storms on TEC at various latitudes (Ho et al 1998;Musman et al 1998;Jakowski et al 1999;Maruyama et al 2004;Zhao et al 2005;Dashora and Pandey 2007;Krankowski et al 2008;Rama Rao et al 2009;Dashora et al 2009). Pandey and Dashora (2005) studied the effect of geomagnetic storm variation of GPS-derived TEC at Udaipur, India and reported decreased value during the storm of May 2005.…”

GPS derived ionospheric TEC response to geomagnetic storm on 24 August 2005 at Indian low latitude stations

“…The variations of GPS-based TEC at different latitudes in Indian sectors during two successive storms that occurred during the period from 8 to 12 November 2004 have been studied by Rama Rao et al (2009). Their results clearly revealed the adverse effects on the GPS range delay.…”

“…One of such effects is the change in ionospheric total electron content (TEC), which perturbs communication and navigation systems (Rama Rao et al, 2009). The southward turning of z-component of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF Bz) has dramatic effects on the topology of the ionospheric plasma.…”