Impact of ionospheric scintillation on GNSS receiver tracking performance over Latin America

This paper presents an assessment of GNSS receiver signal tracking performance under scintillating conditions, through the analysis of receiver Phase Lock Loop (PLL) jitter variance maps, a concept introduced in [15]. These maps are constructed for scintillation events observed at three stations in Brazil: (1) Presidente Prudente (22.1°S, 51.4°W, dip latitude ~12.3°S), located close to the Equatorial Ionisation Anomaly (EIA) crest (2) São José dos Campos (23.2 1°S, 45.86°W, dip latitude ~17.8°S), located under the EIA crest and (3) Porto Alegre (30.0°S, 51.2°W, dip latitude ~20.5°S), located beyond the EIA crest. These stations are currently operational under the CIGALA (Concept for Ionospheric Scintillation Mitigation for Professional GNSS in Latin America) project funded by GSA under FP7. Results clearly show that scintillation is most severe over Presidente Prudente, a location close to the EIA crest. It was also observed that the jitter variances estimated for all the simultaneously observed satellite-to-receiver links increase during the enhanced scintillation levels, indicating the likelihood for cycle slips, loss of signal lock and degraded accuracy in the observations.