Ionospheric propagation activities during GIOVE Mission experimentation

This document presents the activities related to ionospheric assessment obtained after several months of experimentation with the two Galileo experimental satellites: GIOVE-A and GIOVE-B. The performance analysis covers the majority of ionospheric aspects, from Slant Total Electron Content (TEC) and Inter-Frequency Bias (IFB) estimation up to Single Frequency Ionospheric Correction Algorithm performance, that relates directly to the user error budget and hence to positioning performance. Finally, different methods for the detection of ionospheric scintillations using raw data from geodetic-type receivers in sensor stations are reviewed using observables from equatorial stations of the GIOVE Mission network. These results have proved to be a very useful input for the next development phase of the Galileo system.