A Study of diurnal variation of Ionospheric Scintillation effects on GPS signals at low latitude equatorial anomaly station, Surat, India

Global Positioning system (GPS) is a satellite navigation system, which provides users with positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services. Ionospheric scintillations not only can reduce the accuracy of GPS/Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS) receiver pseudo-range and carrier phase measurement but also can result in a complete loss of lock on a satellite. To enable the study of Ionospheric Scintillation characteristics, a GPS Ionospheric Scintillation and Total Electron Content (TEC) monitor is utilized to aid the detection of Ionospheric irregularities and their impact on GPS signals and evaluate performance of GPS receiver. Ionospheric scintillations over low latitude region plays crucial role in the performance of satellite based communications and navigation systems. The ionospheric scintillation and Total Electron Content variations are studied in this paper at Low Latitude station Surat (21.16°N, 72.78°E; Geomagnetic: 12.90°N, 147.35°E), which is situated near the northern crest of the equatorial anomaly region in India.