Development of Cost-Effective GPS Receiver for Ionospheric Scintillation Monitoring Aided with IoT System

Abstract

One of the applications of GPS receiver is to detect and measure the irregularities in satellites communication. Many of the studies conducted the research to analyses the transmission data through ionosphere layers. One of the subjects of the research is scintillation. One of the ionosphere scintillation parameters used for measuring the irregularities is amplitude scintillation (S4). However, the survey-grade or GISTM receiver, which is expensive, was commonly used to monitor the parameter. The other alternative is to used common geodetic GPS receiver that capable of collecting the parameters. This study used ZED-F9P with ANN-MB antenna and Raspberry Pi as the prototype to operate. The data collected during the autumnal equinox showed a pattern of strong ionospheric scintillation effects in the post-midnight hours. The study demonstrates the feasibility of using low-cost GNSS receivers for ionospheric monitoring, which has important implications for various applications such as navigation, communication, and space weather monitoring.