Research Article

Feasibility of precise navigation in high and low latitude regions under scintillation conditions

¹ Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya & IEEC/CTE-UPC, UPC Campus Nord, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
² Institut d'Estudis Espacials de Catalunya IEEC/UPC, Edifici Nexus-201, 08034 Barcelona, Spain
³ RDA - Research and Development in Aerospace GmbH, Rigiplatz 5, 8006 Zürich, Switzerland
⁴ Observatori de l'Ebre, CSIC – Universitat Ramon Llull, 43520 Roquetes, Spain
⁵ European Space Agency (ESA ESTEC), Keplerlaan 1, 2201AZ Noordwijk, Netherlands

^* Corresponding author: jose.miguel.juan@upc.edu

Received: 21 June 2017
Accepted: 15 December 2017

Abstract

Scintillation is one of the most challenging problems in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) navigation. This phenomenon appears when the radio signal passes through ionospheric irregularities. These irregularities represent rapid changes on the refraction index and, depending on their size, they can produce also diffractive effects affecting the signal amplitude and, eventually producing cycle slips. In this work, we show that the scintillation effects on the GNSS signal are quite different in low and high latitudes.

For low latitude receivers, the main effects, from the point of view of precise navigation, are the increase of the carrier phase noise (measured by σ_ϕ) and the fade on the signal intensity (measured by S4) that can produce cycle slips in the GNSS signal. With several examples, we show that the detection of these cycle slips is the most challenging problem for precise navigation, in such a way that, if these cycle slips are detected, precise navigation can be achieved in these regions under scintillation conditions.

For high-latitude receivers the situation differs. In this region the size of the irregularities is typically larger than the Fresnel length, so the main effects are related with the fast change on the refractive index associated to the fast movement of the irregularities (which can reach velocities up to several km/s). Consequently, the main effect on the GNSS signals is a fast fluctuation of the carrier phase (large σ_ϕ), but with a moderate fade in the amplitude (moderate S4). Therefore, as shown through several examples, fluctuations at high-latitude usually do not produce cycle slips, being the effect quite limited on the ionosphere-free combination and, in general, precise navigation can be achieved also during strong scintillation conditions.