Space Weather and its influence on navigation and communication

Kurzfassung

The highly dynamic ionosphere has a strong effect on the performance of radio systems used in space-based communication, navigation and remote sensing. Moreover, ionospheric disturbances caused by space weather effects may degrade the accuracy, reliability and availability of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), such as GPS and the future civilian European system Galileo. During the past decades a growing number of observations are available with the potential to significantly improve monitoring and modelling of the ionosphere. This is important since radio signals transmitted by modern communication, navigation and Earth observation systems are influenced during propagation through or by reflection at the ionosphere, depending on the used frequency. The combination of ground- and space-based data together with appropriate modelling can provide unique information about the ionosphere. The seminar provides an overview about the space weather impact on the ionosphere and the associated disturbances on navigation systems and services. We present how well established and new ionospheric measuring and observation methods can help to improve our understanding of the ionosphere and its dynamics. Finally, we show the influence of selected past space weather events on navigation services and introduce DLR’s space weather service IMPC.