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GPS satellite oscillator faults mimicking ionospheric phase scintillation

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Abstract

It is possible for unreported Global Positioning System satellite faults to cause phase variations mimicking the effect of ionospheric scintillation. A case study of an event on 17 May, 2011 is presented. For approximately 695 s, the L1 signal from the Navstar 43 satellite (pseudo-random number 13) contained pulses of rapid phase variation, in such a manner as to cause a large rise in the sigma-phi scintillation metric. The event was simultaneously observed from two receivers in England, placed 190 km apart. A range of other explanations, that included genuine ionospheric scintillation, were considered but found to be highly unlikely. We therefore recommend that precautions be taken when interpreting phase scintillation values, to prevent satellite faults from contaminating data.

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Acknowledgments

We received financial support from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant EP/H003304/1). We used scintillation data from the Institute of Engineering Surveying and Space Geodesy at the University of Nottingham, and we thank Marcus Andreotti for his assistance in providing this data. We used data from a University of Bath scintillation receiver hosted at the Scott-Amundsen South Pole station. South Pole GPS operations are supported in part by National Science Foundation grants ANT-0840158 and ANT-0638587. The TEC maps were based on RINEX and SP3 data from the International GNSS Service and RINEX data from the EUREF Permanent Network. The URE event data were provided by Karl Kovach. We thank A. J. Van-Dierendonck and Karl Kovach for useful private communications.

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Correspondence to Christopher J. Benton.

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Benton, C.J., Mitchell, C.N. GPS satellite oscillator faults mimicking ionospheric phase scintillation. GPS Solut 16, 477–482 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-011-0247-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-011-0247-3

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