Ionospheric Scintillation Impact on Carrier Tracking Phase Jitter: A Dual-Receiver Study at Tenerife Norte Airport

Kurzfassung

Assessment of Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS) ground-station performance under ionospheric scintillation is essential for operational safety, particularly for the GBAS Approach Service Type E (GAST-E) architecture designed to satisfy stringent Category III (CAT III) accuracy, integrity, continuity, and availability requirements. In this study, a GNSS data campaign was conducted near Tenerife Norte Airport using two closely spaced receivers separated by approximately 3 km. The impact of ionospheric scintillation on Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) tracking characteristics during the ascending phase of solar cycle 25 was investigated through theoretical and experimental differential receiver jitter analysis. Day-to-day, seasonal, and annual variability in PLL phase jitter variance was quantitatively characterized. The results demonstrate a clear influence of solar and geomagnetic activity on the occurrence of moderate-to-strong scintillation events. Receiver- and frequency-dependent variations in mean time to loss-of-lock and probability of loss-of-lock were also analysed. The study emphasizes the importance of accurately estimating thermal-noise-induced phase jitter, total tracking error, and sigma error under combined amplitude and phase scintillation effects for reliable GBAS deployment in low-latitude airport environments. A strong relationship between receiver tracking performance and space weather conditions was established through comparison of PLL jitter characteristics with Rayleigh Taylor (R-T) growth rates and seasonal scintillation variability. The analysis further shows that conventional PLL architectures can enter non-linear operating regimes during severe scintillation conditions, highlighting the need for optimized carrier-phase detrending and tracking-loop parameter tuning for reliable scintillation characterization.