Multi-constellation GNSS observations of equatorial ionospheric scintillation

During the past two decades, GPS receivers have gained tremendous popularity as passive sensing instruments for ionospheric scintillation monitoring due to their low cost and GPS signals´ distributed global coverage. The emergence of Russian´s GLONASS, China´s Beidou, and the European Union´s Galileo satellites has nearly doubled the number of ionosphere piercing points (IPP) offered by GPS alone, greatly improving the spatial coverage of observations. Contemporary GNSS open signals implement data-less pilot channels at multiple bands, which enable more robust receiver tracking loop designs and studies of the dispersive properties of the ionospheric medium. There are, however, challenges in effectively utilizing this massive number of signals. This paper will present an event-driven, multi-constellation, multi-band GNSS data collection system and equatorial scintillation observations generated from data collected during the current solar maximum using the system.