Fifth Symposium on Space Weather

P1.6

Ionospheric Scintillation Products Derived from the COSMIC Satellite Constellation

Keith M. Groves, Air Force Research Laboratory, Hanscom AFB, MA; and C. Lin, M. Starks, T. Beach, R. Caton, and C. S. Carrano

Launched in April 2006, the COSMIC or Formosat-3 constellation consists of six polar orbiting satellites equipped with GPS receiver, a UV sensor and a tri-band (VHF, UHF, L-band) radio beacon transmitter. The primary purpose of the on-board GPS receivers is to provide profiles of temperature and humidity in the troposphere through the so-called radio occultation technique that exploits measurements of GPS signals when the ray-path between the COSMIC satellite and the GPS satellite passes through the lower atmosphere. Such occultations necessarily require that a portion of the ray-path also passes through the ionosphere and may be used to identify turbulent regions where electron density irregularities exist that cause scintillations of the GPS signals on or near the earth's surface. Such scintillations have been shown to disrupt and degrade GPS navigation as well as satellite communications and represent the most significant space weather impact on both civil and military space-based radio systems. Scintillations may also be observed directly from COSMIC via ground-based reception of the tri-band beacons signals from the satellites. A combination of space-based occultations and ground-based beacon observations can be used to develop a global scintillation monitoring capability and the Air Force Research Laboratory is currently working to integrate these techniques with its existing Scintillation Network Decision Aid (SCINDA) technology. The capabilities will be further enhanced with the launch of the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite in 2008 which represents a similar source of data in a low-inclination orbit that fills a relative gap in coverage provided by the current COSMIC constellation.

Poster Session 1, Space Weather Posters
Monday, 21 January 2008, 2:30 PM-4:00 PM, Exhibit Hall B

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