Ground- and Space-Based Observations of Ionospheric Irregularities over Nigeria during Solar Minimum

Details Ground- and Space-Based Observations of Ionospheric Irregularities over Nigeria during Solar Minimum Ground- and Space-Based Observations of Ionospheric Irregularities over Nigeria during Solar Minimum

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufmsa31b1424c&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #SA31B-1424

Physics

[2439] Ionosphere / Ionospheric Irregularities, [2494] Ionosphere / Instruments And Techniques, [6929] Radio Science / Ionospheric Physics, [7944] Space Weather / Ionospheric Effects On Radio Waves

Scientific paper

Ionospheric irregularities and plasma turbulence can cause scintillation in the amplitude and phase of trans-ionospheric radio waves employed by satellite navigation and communication systems, leading to a degradation of system performance. Due to the relatively sparse distribution of ground-based ionospheric monitoring instruments in Africa, the climatology and morphology of ionospheric irregularities over Africa have not been adequately characterized. Boston College, Air Force Research Laboratory, and the Universities of Ilorin and Lagos in Nigeria have collaborated to operate two high-rate GPS receivers capable of monitoring both Total Electron Content (TEC) and scintillation intensity. We use GPS measurements collected from 2007-2009 to 1) identify ionospheric irregularities and quantify their spatial extent, 2) estimate the zonal drift velocity by cross-correlating TEC measurements between pairs of GPS satellites, 3) relate ionospheric irregularities to the occurrence of weak scintillation at the GPS L1 frequency, 4) characterize the strength of amplitude and phase scintillations in terms of their power spectral densities, and 5) use phase screen theory to predict the intensity of scintillation that would be observed by ionospheric monitoring sensors operating at lower frequencies. Measurements of plasma density and zonal drift from the C/NOFS satellite during passes over Nigeria are used to corroborate and complement these ground-based GPS observations.

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