Investigation of X-band and Ka-band amplitude scintillation based on measurement data collected during ESA’s BepiColombo superior solar conjunction campaign

Abstract

Solar phase scintillation and solar amplitude scintillation are fundamentally important in deep space mission operations for designing a communication system capable of transmitting signals when the signal path is close to the Sun. The ESA’s BepiColombo measurement data were analyzed in a previous paper in terms of the power spectral density of the solar phase scintillation, also with a comparison with Woo’s solar phase scintillation theory, when X-band and Ka-band signals propagate close to the Sun with a small Sun-Earth-Probe (SEP) angle during the superior solar conjunction campaign in March 2021 in its cruise phase to Mercury. In this paper the solar amplitude scintillation is analyzed both by calculating the power spectral density and the scintillation index. The results of scintillation index, derived from these measurement data, fit the NASA JPL’s scintillation index model.