Detrend effect on the scalograms of GPS power scintillation

The study of amplitude scintillation on GPS radio links is usually done after detrending the time series of the transmitted power so to define scintillations as the chaotic fluctuation around a unitary value. In a sense, the choice of how to detrend the time series is part of the definition of scintillation.     

GPS scintillation and TEC gradients at equatorial latitudes in April 2006

We use observations of ionospheric scintillation at equatorial latitudes from two GPS receivers specially modified for recording, at a sampling rate of 50 Hz, the phase and the amplitude of the L1 signal and the Total Electron Content (TEC) from L1 and L2. The receivers, called GISTM (GPS Ionospheric Scintillation and TEC Monitor), are located in Vietnam (Hue, 16.4°N, 107.6°E; Hoc Mon, 10.9°N, 106.6°E). These experimental observations are analysed together with the tomographic reconstruction of the ionosphere produced by the Multi-Instrument Data Analysis System (MIDAS) for investigating the moderate geomagnetic storm which occurred on early April 2006, under low solar activity. The synergic adoption of the ionospheric imaging and of the GISTM measurements supports the identification of the scale-sizes of the ionospheric irregularities causing scintillations and helps the interpretation of the physical mechanisms generating or inhibiting the appearance of the equatorial F layer irregularities. In particular, our study attributes to the turning of the IMF (Interplanetary Magnetic Field) between northward and southward direction an important role in the inhibition of the generation of spread F irregularities resulting in a lack of scintillation enhancement in the post-sunset hours.     

Optimum parameter for estimating phase fluctuations on transionospheric signals at high latitudes

Transionospheric radio signals may experience fluctuations in their amplitude and phase due to irregularity in the spatial electron density distribution, referred to as scintillation. Ionospheric scintillation is responsible for transionospheric signal degradation that can affect the performance of satellite based navigation systems. Usually, the scintillation activity is measured by means of indices such as the normalised standard deviation of the received intensity S₄ and the standard deviation of the received phase σ_? typically calculated over 1 min of data. Data from a GPS scintillation monitor based on 50 Hz measurements recorded at Dirigibile Italia Station (Ny-Alesund, Svalbard), in the frame of the ISACCO project ( De Franceschi et al., 2006) are used to investigate possible adoption of an alternative parameter for the estimate of phase fluctuations: i.e., the standard deviation of the phase rate of change S_?. This parameter is shown to better correlate with S₄ being much less detrending dependent than σ_?. The couple (S₄, S_?) should be then considered a more physical proxy of radio scintillation than the couple (S₄, σ_?).