Ionospheric Effects on the Performance of Satellite-Based Navigation in India

摘要

The dynamic ionospheric effects prevalent over Indian region, including the large range delays, high spatial gradients, equatorial bubbles and scintillations not only exhibit day-to-day variability but also exhibit seasonal and longitudinal variations. Non-Precision Approach (NPA) services provided by GPS is very robust to such variations whereas the performance of Precision Approach (PA) services is severely affected by large and sudden variations in ionospheric delays. Understanding, quantifying and predicting the behavior of ionosphere over Indian region would in turn aid in designing robust satellite-based navigation systems which can account for these ionospheric effects. This paper reports interesting results on characterizing ionospheric behaviour over Indian region using data from Total Electron Content (TEC) monitoring stations in India.