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Do modern multi-frequency civil receivers eliminate the ionospheric effect?

Abstract

It is common knowledge in the GNSS community that the ionosphere is dispersive in the L-band, meaning the refractive effects on the carrier phases are proportional to the wavelengths of the carriers, in turn causing differential variation in the measured codes and phases of the various navigation signals transmitted by the satellites. Use of multiple signals of distinct center frequency transmitted from the same Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellite allows direct observation and removal of the great majority of the ionospheric delay, and gives the impression to users that the ionosphere may not be a problem for modernized receivers. While the general assumption of nearly perfect correlation between the effects measured on multiple independent signals is correct in normal conditions, it does not appear to hold in the presence of ionospheric scintillation.
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Category

Academic article

Language

English

Author(s)

Affiliation

  • The University of Calgary
  • SINTEF
  • ESA Research and Scientific Support Department

Year

2017

Published in

Inside GNSS

ISSN

2329-2970

Volume

12

Issue

6

Page(s)

34 - 39

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