Modeling the Effects of Ionospheric Scintillation on GPS Carrier Phase Tracking

A characterization is given for the behavior of Global Positioning System phase tracking loops in the presence of severe equatorial ionospheric scintillation. The purpose of this work is to develop a simple, general, and realistic scintillation effects model that can be used to improve the scintillation performance of phase tracking loops. The new characterization of scintillation effects proposed herein employs a differentially detected bit error model to predict cycle slipping rates that approximately agree with data-driven simulation tests.