Comprehensive statistical analysis of scintillations on L-band signals from six GNSS constellations over low-latitude region

Abstract Rapid variations in the amplitude and phase of signals travelling through the ionosphere of the Earth are known as ionospheric scintillations. This study presents the results of amplitude and phase scintillation characteristics at different L-band signal frequencies of six satellite constellations. The scintillation data was acquired using Septentrio’s PolaRx5S Ionospheric GNSS scintillation monitoring receiver located at a low latitude station. Samples of S 4 and σ φ data above standard threshold values with a 30° elevation mask for 293 days of the year 2023 are considered for analysis. Three aspects of scintillations are studied: i) statistics of their occurrences at different frequencies for all constellations ii) the correlation between amplitude and phase scintillation parameters for different frequencies iii) the temporal and spatial distributions of amplitude and phase scintillation at selected intensity levels. The results shows that about 70 % of total scintillation activity occurred during 20:30 to 22:59 LT. Further it is found that the signals coming in northern direction followed by southern direction are most affected compared to other directions indicating more ionospheric irregularities in those directions. This information is useful for identifying the least scintillation affected signals for position fixing.