Mitigation of the effect of ionospheric scintillation on differential GPS rangefinding

The phenomenon of the scintillation of radiowave propagation producing irregularities in the equatorial ionosphere is discussed in this paper. Based on a dual frequency data for fluctuations along the path of GPS signals through the equatorial station, sampled at a rate of 1 Hz, are used to investigate the phase scintillation phenomenon. Statistical parameters of the signal such as the scintillation index, autocorrelation function, cross-correlation function, power spectrum density, spectral index, etc., are investigated. Experimental results concerning phase scintillation in the ionosphere structure are presented and has been demonstrated by using the MATLAB/spl reg/ program. Theoretical results are compared to observational data taken from the equatorial region. Both correlation function and power spectral density analyses are considered. Finally, some future effects in ionospheric scintillation studies in the areas of transionospheric communication are recommended.