Extreme scintillation structure diagnostics

Kurzfassung

Satellite constellations that comprise the global navigation satellite system are monitoring the ionosphere routinely for space-weather forecasting. However, quantitative statistical characterization of ionospheric irregularities has been confined to dedicated studies. This paper demonstrates and validates a new diagnostic procedure that exploits back propagation (BP) to reduce diffraction that develops as signals propagate through disturbed ionosphere regions and ensuing free space. BP has been used primarily to localize structure imparted to ionosphere occultation measurements. However, BP can be applied more broadly to satellite-to-near-earth observations. The new approach applies irregularity parameter estimation (IPE) to phase extracted after BP. BP-IPE applications to low-latitude strong scintillation data are presented, which reveal new irregularity characteristics distinctly different from commonly measured characteristics associated with equatorial plasma bubbles. The procedures are validated with multiple phase screen simulations.