Robust detection of ionospheric scintillations using MF-DFA technique

Abstract

The performance of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers is limited by the ionospheric scintillation effects that cause signal degradation due to refraction, reflection and scattering of the signals. Hence, there is a need to develop an ionospheric scintillation detection technique for robust GNSS receivers. In this paper, a new algorithm based on multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) is proposed for detecting the ionospheric irregularities. The ionospheric and scintillation GNSS data recorded at Koneru Lakshmaiah (KL) University, Guntur, India, was considered for the analysis. The carrier to noise ratio (C/N 0) time series data of GNSS satellite vehicles that are affected due to scintillations was decomposed using adaptive time–frequency methods like empirical mode decomposition (EMD), ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) and complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMD). It was observed that the CEEMD method combined with MF-DFA provides better results as compared to the EMD and EEMD techniques.