Abstract:
With the increase in the use of satellite-based
navigation services, the forecasting of L band scintillation has
turned out to be of paramount importance as it affects their
accuracy and availability. Forecasting the time of occurrence
or non-occurrence, strength and probable location of scintillation
enables the service providers and users to take appropriate
action to mitigate the effects and optimize the services.
We use the recently developed method to retrieve TEC from
the ionospheric correction data transmitted by the Indian
satellite-based augmentation system (SBAS)–GAGAN. By
making use of the established linear relation between the dusk
time TEC and the maximum probable scintillation intensity
(S4max), scintillation forecast maps have been generated as
early as 1930 LT. The superposition of actual S4 measurements,
obtained from the GAGAN network of receivers, on
the forecasted S4max map shows that the actual measurements
are less than the predicted S4max except on very fewoccasions.
The potential of the simple technique to predict the 2 D maps
of maximum probable scintillation index for the whole night
has been demonstrated which with more refinements could
evolve into a viable forecast or forewarning system.
