Validating Ionospheric Scintillation Indices Extracted from 30s-Sampling-Interval GNSS Geodetic Receivers with Long-Term Ground and In-Situ Observations in High-Latitude Regions

Abstract

As a frequently-occurred phenomenon in the high-latitude region, ionospheric scintillations affect the stable service of the positioning navigation and timing service of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), calling for an urgent need of monitoring the scintillations accurately. The monitoring of scintillations usually adopts a special type of receiver, called an ionospheric scintillation monitoring receiver (ISMR), which cannot cover the whole high-latitude region due to its loss distribution. Geodetic receivers are densely distributed, but set at a 30s-sampling-interval usually. It is a controversial issue, namely, the accuracy of the scintillation index extracted from 30s-sampling-interval observations. This paper evaluates the accuracy of two 30s-sampling-interval indices in monitoring scintillations from both the time and space aspects using observations collected in the whole year of 2020. The accuracy in the time aspect is assessed with the phase scintillation index from ISMR as the reference through the following three-pronged approaches, i.e., the accuracy of the daily scintillation occurrence rates in the year 2020, the correlation with space weather parameters, and the variation pattern of the scintillation occurrence rate with the local time and day of the year 2020. The accuracy in space is studied based on the scintillation grid model considering the following two aspects, i.e., the scintillation monitoring performance in a Swarm satellite observation arc, and the statistical scintillation occurrence rate in the whole research region throughout the year 2020. The results of this paper reveal the efficiency of the 30s-sampling-interval scintillation indices in monitoring scintillations and detecting the occurrence patterns in the high-latitude region. The outcome of this paper can provide a basic idea for introducing the widely distributed geodetic receivers to monitor and model the scintillations in the high-latitude region.