Test of velocity-displacement estimation using variometric method under the condition of ionospheric scintillation during equinoctial months of solar maximum period 2012

Abstract

The Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) technologies have made significant contribution to seismology studies. Some processing strategies are well known, like real time PPP and DGPS techniques. These two methods have been widely used for GNSS based seismic activities monitoring. The first method requires accurate models of GNSS measurement errors to achieve accuracy in centimeter (cm) and need convergence time in order of minutes to hours. The second method need relative short distance of reference stations to reduce significantly measurement errors. To overcome disadvantages of such two methods, the variometric method was used to attain accuracy, but the method needs to be tested in the high ionospheric disturbance of equatorial region. During occurrences of plasma bubble, the radio signals from satellite passing through the ionosphere sometimes show rapid amplitude and phase variations called ionospheric scintillation. The occurrences of ionospheric scintillation could degrade the performance of systems and generate errors in received messages. In this study, variometric measurements are performed during the equinoctial month (March 2012) when the occurrence of scintillation was more intense. Results showed degradation of measurement accuracy during strong scintillation occurrences. The errors reached more than 1 m/s, especially for up-down measurement. Key words: Equinox, GISTM, ionospheric scintillation, variometric.