Modeling of ionospheric scintillation at low-latitude Original Research Article

The presence and movement of plasma density fluctuations in the F-region of the ionosphere are studied by monitoring phase and amplitude of radio waves propagating through the region. In this paper, we have used weak scattering theory and assumed the plasma density fluctuations to behave like phase changing diffraction screen. Appropriate relations for scintillation index S4, and phase variance δϕ are derived and computed for different parameters of the plasma density irregularities of the ionosphere. SROSS-C2 satellite in situ measurements of plasma density fluctuations, which provide direct information about the structure and morphology of irregularities that are responsible for scintillation of radio waves, were used first time to develop a scintillation model for low latitude. It is observed that the scintillation index S4 and phase variance δϕ depends on the strength of the plasma turbulence. Finally, the results obtained from modeling are compared and discussed with the available recent results.