Real-Time Worldwide Monitoring of Ionospheric Scintillation Using Geodetic Detrending

A real-time (RT) ionospheric scintillation monitoring tool has been developed based on observations from geodetic receivers in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) networks. It extends the application of the Geodetic Detrending (GD) technique to make it work with RT products for satellite orbit, tropospheric and satellite/receiver clock corrections applied to uncombined GNSS signals. It overcomes the limitation of the coverage of specialized ionospheric scintillation monitoring receivers (ISMRs), enabling worldwide monitoring. Through this novel tool, it is possible to supply large RT information about scintillation activity to both GNSS users and the scientific community. The performance of the tool has been validated by cross checking with post-processing GD results and reference data from a collocated ISMR in a period with intense scintillation activity. The results demonstrate high consistency for the phase scintillation index between the RT tool based on geodetic receivers operating at 1 Hz and the reference ISMR. The few outliers detected are related with the different processing, location and sampling frequency from each type of receiver.