Analysis of ionospheric scintillations of GPS and VHF/UHF signals over low latitude Indian region

Global Positioning System (GPS) and its Space Based Augmentation System's (SBAS) performance degrade significantly in equatorial low latitude region due to ionospheric effects. Ionospheric scintillation is one of the major problems to GPS and satellite communication radio links of frequency less than 4GHz. In this paper, amplitude scintillations of GPS signals are studied at three low latitude receiver stations namely Trivandrum, Bangalore and Hyderabad of GPS Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system Total Electron Content (TEC) network for the solar minimum year 2006. VHF/UHF signals scintillation is analyzed for a typical day at different low latitude stations such as Trivandrum, Bangalore and Bhopal of Coherent Radio Beacon Experiment (CRABEX) receivers network Also, the effect of TEC on amplitude scintillations occurrence is investigated. From the results it is observed that the amplitude scintillations are occurring more during equinox period. Even though, the variations trend of both scintillations and TEC is similar, the respective peaks are occurred at different latitudes (12.9°N and 20°N). The results would be useful in modelling and prediction of ionospheric scintillation over low latitude Indian region.