Method of measuring phase ionosphere scintillations

Abstract

Method of measuring ionosphere scintillation phase index Sigma-Phi, the method including, for each of N satellites being tracked, calculating a phase prediction at an i-th sample; for each of the N satellites, calculating an individual loop discriminator signal based on the phase prediction; rejecting the i-th samples of some of the N satellites, where K non-rejected satellites remain; calculating common loop discriminator signal based on the individual loop discriminator signals of non-rejected K satellites; calculating a phase estimate and a Doppler frequency estimate at the i-th sample for each of the N satellites based on individual loop discriminator signal; calculating test statistic based on the phase estimate at the i-th sample and an observed phase for each of the N satellites; calculating index Sigma-Phi as standard deviation estimation of the test statistic for each of the N satellites; and outputting the index Sigma-Phi for each of the N satellites.