Equatorial scintillation calculations based on coherent scatter radar and C/NOFS data

Abstract

During its transit through a region of equatorial ionospheric irregularities, sensors on board the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite provide a one‐dimensional description of the medium, which can be extended to two dimensions if the structures are assumed to be elongated in the direction of the magnetic field lines. The C/NOFS scintillation calculation approach assumes that the medium is equivalent to a diffracting screen with random phase fluctuations that are proportional to the irregularities in the total electron content, specified through the product of the directly measured electron density by an estimated extent of the irregularity layer along the raypaths. Within the international collaborative effort anticipated by the C/NOFS Science Definition Team, the present work takes the vertical structure of the irregularities into more detailed consideration, which could lead to improved predictions of scintillation. Initially, it describes a flexible model for the power spectral density of the equatorial ionospheric irregularities, estimates its shape parameters from C/NOFS in situ data and uses the signal‐to‐noise ratio S/N measurements by the São Luís coherent scatter radar to estimate the mean square electron density fluctuation 〈ΔN2〉 within the corresponding sampled volume. Next, it presents an algorithm for the wave propagation through a three‐dimensional irregularity layer which considers the variations of 〈ΔN2〉 along the propagation paths according to observations by the radar. Data corresponding to several range‐time‐intensity maps from the radar is used to predict time variations of the scintillation index S4 at the L1 Global Positioning System (GPS) frequency (1575.42 MHz). The results from the scintillation calculations are compared with corresponding measurements by the colocated São Luís GPS scintillation monitor for an assessment of the prediction capability of the present formulation.