Real-Time Monitoring and Logging of Ionospheric
Scintillation and Total Electron Content
Hina Magsi Arslan Ahmed
Department of Electrical Engineering Department of Electrical Engineering
Sukkur IBA University Sukkur IBA University
Pakistan Pakistan
hina.mece17@iba-suk.edu.pk arslan-ahmed@iba-suk.edu.pk
Abstract—This paper presents a study on ionospheric scin-
tillation and total electron content (TEC) in real-time over
Pakistan by using a Septentrio Polarx5s multi-frequency and
multi-constellation Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)
receiver. The ionosphere is the main cause of affecting the
performance of a GNSS receiver due to being upper most layer in
the Earth’s atmosphere consisting of electrically charged particles
such as free electrons, atoms and molecules. The presence of
these electrically charged particles in the ionosphere degrades
the trans-ionospheric signals by producing rapid variations in
the amplitude and phase of the received signals such as GPS.
These variations in the amplitude and phase are termed as
ionospheric scintillation. The effects of scintillation are different
at different latitudes and severe scintillation is usually observed
during the peak of the solar maximum period or during a severe
geomagnetic storm. The effects of scintillation on satellite signals
has urged the need to understand the scintillation morphology at
all latitudes. This paper presents the ionospheric scintillation and
TEC variations over Pakistan by logging the real time GPS data.
The data is collected by installing a Septentrio multi-frequency
GNSS receiver at Sukkur, Pakistan (Latitude 27.73◦ N, Longitude
68.82◦ E). This is the first ever space weather monitoring station
installed for research purposes anywhere in Pakistan. The main
aim of this paper is to efficiently log scintillation for understand-
ing the scintillation occurrence patterns over Pakistan and to
analyze how the scintillation can affect the performance of GNSS
receivers. This paper uses a data set of a single day, i. e.,24
hours only but this can be extended for more thorough study on
ionospheric scintillation by taking a long dataset if desired.
Keywords—Ionospheric Scintillation, GNSS, GPS, amplitude
scintillation, phase scintillation.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The ionosphere is a layer of the Earth’s atmosphere that
lies 75 kms above the Earth’s surface and extends more
than 1000 kms. Any type of disturbance in the ionosphere
results in the degradation of the signals propagating through
the ionosphere. This disturbance occurs mainly due to the
presence of time-varying electron density irregularities as
a result of a geomagnetic storm or increased solar activity
which is due to the solar coronal holes at the Sun’s surface
[1], [2]. The disturbance in the ionosphere causes serious
problems for the trans-ionospheric signals such as GPS etc. The
most common problems faced by the satellite systems due to
disturbed ionosphere is the amplitude and phase variations
in the received signals. These variations are also known
as ionospheric scintillation and arises as a result of space
weather phenomena. The space weather results when the solar
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Arif Hussain
Department of Electrical Engineering
Sukkur IBA University
Pakistan
arif.hussain@iba-suk.edu.pk
wind containing charged particles from the sun also known
as heated plasma strikes the Earth’s magnetic field which
in result causes a geomagnetic storm [3]. The geomagnetic
storm may be of minor to severe intensity depending on the
size and speed of solar wind striking the Earth’s magnetic
field. During the course of a geomagnetic storm, the signals
passing through the ionosphere may undergo severe amount of
fluctuations (ionospheric scintillation) [4]–[7] in the amplitude
and/or phase of the signals propagating through the ionosphere.
The strong ionospheric scintillation is a major cause of error
in the navigational systems [7], [8] such as GPS. Severe
scintillation may result in loss of lock at the tracking loop
of the GPS receiver due to cycle slip and the signal may
be considered absent even if there is a signal present with a
strong carrier-to-noise ratio [9], [10]. In order to study the
effects of scintillation on GPS receivers, real time monitoring
of ionospheric scintillation is desirable for reliable positioning
services. An elaborative study on the occurrence of scintillation
and TEC variations must also be done to understand the effects
of scintillation on RF signals first.
This paper presents the real-time monitoring and analysis
of TEC variations and ionospheric scintillation over Pakistan
using GPS signals for the first time. For this purpose, real-
time data has been logged by installing a Septentrio Polarx5s
multi-frequency GNSS receiver at the Department of Electrical
Engineering, Sukkur IBA University, Sukkur, Pakistan.
II. P OLA R X 5S GNSS R ECEIVER D ESCRIPTION
The Polarx5S is a multi–frequency multi–constellation
GNSS space weather monitoring station that is purposely built
to study the ionospheric scintillation. It has 544 hardware
channels for instantaneous tracking of all satellites in view
and can log data as low as 50 Hz measurement rate. The
signals that can be locked by the Septentrio receiver are
GPS (L1C/A, L1P, L2P) etc. Here the letters in the brackets
represents the frequency bands associated with that particular
navigation system. The PolaRx5S has the capability of logging
real-time TEC data and ionospheric indices (S4 , σφ ) for all the
available GNSS frequencies. The interference events in radio
signals are more and more incorporated and are challenging
to distinguish from scintillation. The PolaRx5S has built-in
spectrum analyzer for monitoring of interference. There are
some smoothing algorithms for mitigation of multipath such as
A Posteriori Multipath Estimator (APME+) to mitigate the short
delay multipath which increases the quality of measurements
and Advanced Interference Mitigation (AIM+) to overcome the connected to a PC which is showing the live ionospheric
interference before it can affect the ionospheric scintillation scintillation and TEC information. The antenna is mounted
indices [11]. on the rooftop of the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Sukkur IBA University, Sukkur as shown in Fig. 3. There
Polarx5S receiver has built-in web user interface that is are different interfaces on the PC screen in Fig. 2. The main
accessible over network or Wifi connection. This Web User interface is the RxControl which is used to make a connection
Interface provides secure access to all settings and status with the Septentrio receiver and then for data logging RxLogger
information of receiver, storage of data and fast and robust is used.
upgrading of firmware as shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 1a shows
the information about receiver i.e receiver position, Uptime
(time since last power cycle), total number of tracked satellites,
temperature and applied voltage. Fig. 1b shows the receiver
position which is fixed, Wifi icon ,overall signal quality ,internal
logging and external logging. Fig. 1c indicate the signal quality,
CPU load and RF antenna power. Fig. 1d shows the GNSS
signals tracked by receiver and used in PVT(Position Velocity
Time). The green color line shows that these satellites are
tracked and used in PVT whereas blue line shows that satellites
from these systems are being tracked but not used in PVT.
Fig. 1e shows the logging status and capacity of disk. Fig. 1f
gives information about data streams, receiver logged data in
internal disk (USB1) and (USB2).

Fig. 2. Septentrio PolaRx5S receiver set-up and data logging in PC.

B. PolaNt Choke Ring B3/E6 Antenna

The estimation of ionopsheric scintillation and TEC can
have severe implications due to multipath. The effect on signal
amplitude and phase due to multipath cannot be regarded as
scintillation and therefore must be removed. To lower the effects
of multipath, a Polanet Choke ring B3/E6 antenna is used.
The antenna is mounted at the rooftop having clear sky view as
shown in Fig. 3 and is capable of receiving the GPS, BeiDou,
GLONASS, IRNSS and Galileo signals.

Fig. 1. Information about the Septentrio Receiver status and its connectivity.
a) location of the receiver along with latitude and longitude; b) Receiver
status and and overall quality of the tracked satellites; b) Quality indicators
of the receiver processor and antenna; d) GNSS systems being used in PVT;
s) Logging and recording of data into internal disk storage; f) Data stream
logged by the receiver for scintillation data.

The ionospheric scintillation and TEC data can be logged us-

ing different data formats such as SBF (Septentrio Binary File),
RINEX (Receiver Independent Exchange), ISMR (Ionospheric
Scintillation Monitoring Record), BINEX (Binary Exchange
Format), NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) and
RTCM (Radio Technical Commission for Maritime). Each data
format can log different data streams so care must be taken
when logging scintillation data to avoid wrong logging of data
as the data may not contain the scintillation indices.
A. Deploying the Polarx5S Receiver
The receiver setup for recording the scintillation and TEC
parameters is shown in Fig. 2. Here, we have a receiver
Fig. 3. Choke Ring Antenna mounted on the rooftop at Sukkur IBA University,
Sukkur, Pakistan.
The Choke ring antenna is integrated with low-noise
amplifiers, powerful filters to reject out of band interference to
reject multipath. The radome structure of the antenna makes
it powerful to receive satellite signals even in severe weather
conditions. It is high precision geodetic multi-frequency multi-
constellation choke ring antenna to use with PolaRx group and
has capability of receiving GNSS signals like BeiDou B3 and
Galileo E6.

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 III. S CINTILLATION AND TEC M EASUREMENTS The time rate of change of TEC, i. e., ΔT EC can be
computed as
A. Measuring Ionospheric Scintillation
The GPS signal in the absence of ionospheric scintillation ΔT EC = T EC1 − T EC2 (8)
can be modelled [12] as
where T EC1 is the TEC at time t1 and T EC2 is the TEC at
time t2 .
s(t) = Ad(t)c(t)cos(ωt + φ) + n(t) (1)
IV. L OGGING S CINTILLATION AND TEC DATA
where A represents amplitude, d(t) denotes the navigation
data in the signal, ω is the carrier frequency, c(t) is the Once the experimental setup starts working and all the
C/A(Coarse/Aquisition) code of satellite and n(t) is the parameters are set for scintillation and TEC measurements, the
noise. In the presence of scintillation, the signal can be modelled data is logged at 50 Hz rate and the same has been used for
as the TEC as well. The logged data is stored as an SBF files
on hourly basis. So, in a day, a total of 24 files are created
for post-processing. It must be noted that the data logging
s(t) = A.δAd(t)c(t)cos(ωt + φ + δφ) + n(t) (2) will only initiate when the Polarx5s receiver is attached to the
PC and tracking enough satellites for position estimation. The
where δA represents the amplitude fluctuations and δφ rep- following information is used for estimating the scintillation
resents the phase fluctuations in the signal. From (2), the and TEC values in the form of blocks of data.
amplitude scintillation index, S4 , can be calculated as
a) MeasEpoch: It is a reference point from which
 GPS time is measured. This M easEpoch block includes all
I 2  − I 2  measurement data set for all tracked signals over specific epoch.
S4 = (3)
I The parameter that includes in measurement data set are: the
pseudorange, the carrier phase, the Doppler, the C/No (carrier-
where I = δA2 is the signal intensity that indicates the variations to-noise ratio) and the lock time.
in received signal power and brackets  represent the average
over a certain time interval. The phase scintillation, (σφ ), on the b) MeasExtra: This is used for internal correction pa-
other hand can calculated by taking the standard deviation of rameters applied during pre-processing, and the noise variations.
(δφ) over 60s [13]. From [5], [14], the TEC can be calculated c) IQCorr: The IQCorr block contain the GPS signal
as real and imaginary parts after the tracking for navigation data
 extraction every 20 milliseconds.
sat
q2
φ= Ne ds0 (4) d) ReceiverStatus: This block provides the status of the
2cεme f (2π)2 rx receiver i.e CPU load or time since last reset which is helpful
 sat in estimating the block percentage of the NLOS satellites.
where TEC = rx Ne ds0 indicates the integral of election e) ChannelStatus: This block is used for logging the
density (TEC) along the satellite and the receiver path, me is status and health of active receiver channels. The active channels
mass of an electron, q is the charge of an electron, ε is the are those that a satellite has been allocated. The status of the
permitivity of free space, c indicates the speed of light and f active channel is defined as idle ,search, sync or tracking. The
is the signal carrier frequency. By substituting constant values, health is indicated as healthy, unhealthy or unknown.
(4) can be re-written as
f) ReceiverSetup: This block contain the information
40.3 about the eceiver set-up like antenna offset,receiver firmware
φ= T EC (5) version ,receiver name and receiver serial number.
cf
g) GPSNav, GLONav, GALNav, BDSNav and QZSNav:
In case the dual frequency based TEC measurements The decoded navigation data for each satellite is included in
are required which are much more accurate than the single these blocks.
frequency TEC measurements as given by (5), then it can be
calculated as [4] The above data contain loads of information and it is not
always useful to log the data at the navigation data rate which
  is 50 Hz (20 ms). Some of the information in estimating the
1 1 scintillation and TEC values are required every 20 ms such as
P2 − P1 = 40.3T EC − 2 (6)
f22 f1 the IQ data whereas receiver or channel status are not required
so frequently. Logging all the information at 20 ms would lead
where P1 and P2 are the group path lengths of the L1 to over burdening the receiver and it might goes into halt state
and L2 signals and f1 and f2 are the L1 and L2 frequencies due to heavy amount of data. A complete list of timestamp for
respectively. Re-arranging (6), the TEC can be given as each data recorded is given in Table I.
 2 2  Once the parameters shown in Table I are logged, they
1 f1 f2 have been used to estimate the scintillation and TEC values
T EC = (P2 − P1 ) (7)
40.3 f12 − f22 along with C/No , elevation angle etc. as shown in Fig. 4. This

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 TABLE I. D IFFERENT DATA B LOCKS USED FOR LOGGING THE
S CINTILLATION AND TEC DATA IN S EPTENTRIO R ECEIVER to elevation angle. The +ve signs in the skyview plot shows
the GPS satellites along with their numbers whereas the five
S.No. Parameters Logging Rates
20ms(50Hz) 1sec(1Hz) 10sec OnChange
small boxes above each satellite represents the GPS signal
1. IQCorr  frequencies from L1 to L5 locked by the receiver. The first
2. MeasEpoch  box represents the status of L1 frequency signals, second box
3. MeasExtra 
4. ReceiverStatus 
is assigned to L2C frequency signals, third to L5 signal, fourth
5. ChannelStatus  box to L1P(Y) signal and the fifth box shows the L2P(Y) signal
6. ReceiverSetup  status. If the color of a box assigned to a particular satellite
7. GPSNav 
8. GLONav 
signal is yellow then it means that the receiver is searching the
9. GALNav  signal on that frequency, blue color indicates that the satellite is
10. BDSNav  tracked and locked but may not be used in positioning solution
11. QZSNav  due to low carrier-to-noise ratio or other factors. Similarly, a
green color box shows that the satellite is tracked and used
in positioning solution. In this study, we have used results of
figure is the processed data and is in SBF format which is the satellites that are above fifteen degrees elevation angle in
then converted to Ionospehric Scintillation Monitoring Record order to avoid effects of multipath as they create problems in
(ISMR) file. The ISMR file contains 62 columns each columns estimating the ionospheric scintillation.
represent different parameter like Col. 1 is GPS week number,
Col. 2 is GPS Time in seconds and Col. 8 is S4 Index and so
on [11].

Fig. 4. Post-processing of data for generating the SBF files Fig. 6. Skyview Plot of GPS Satellites on 23rd April 2019 from 10:00 to
11:00 hours

Fig. 7 shows the amplitude and phase scintillation plots on

Fig. 5. Ionospheric Scintillation Monitoring Record (ISMR) file after
processing the SBF file
V. R ESULTS
The ionospheric scintillation and TEC results for 23rd April,
2019 are shown in figures below. Fig. 6 shows the skyview plot
of all the visible satellites locked by the Septentrio receiver
on 23rd April 2019 from 10 to 11 hours UTC. The skyview
plot shows the actual locations of the satellites with respect
23rd April, 2019 for some of the satellites that were visible on
the day. The scintillation shown with respect to elevation angle,
lock time and rate of change of TEC. In all of the satellites
shown in Fig. 7, the amplitude scintillation values are tend to
be higher than the phase scintillation values. This is due to
the fact that Pakistan is located over mid-latitude regions close
to low latitude and there is always a probability of getting
higher amplitude scintillation values as compared to the phase
scintillation values as cited by many researchers [1], [15].
The second graph from the top in each satellite represents
the loss of lock at the L1 frequency. There is no discontinuity
observed in any case which shows that no satellite lost lock to
the signal during the recording time. Normally, there is a loss of
lock whenever there is a moderate to strong scintillation usually
above 0.5. In our case, no satellite faced scintillation (either
amplitude or phase) above 0.5 so no loss of lock was observed
on any satellite which was quite obvious. The third and fourth
graph shows the elevation angle and TEC variations respectively.
The reason for showing the elevation angle is its relationship
with the time rate of change of TEC and amplitude and phase
scintillation values. It has been observed that when the elevation
angle is below 20 degrees, the ΔTEC and scintillation values are
higher. This relationship shows that these values are definitely

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 (a) (b)

(c) (d)

(e) (f)

(g) (h)
Fig. 7. GPS Satellites from April 23,2019. S4 Index, σφ , Lock Time, Elevation angle, ΔTEC

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due to multipath effect. That’s why most of the researchers
suggest that if ionospheric scintillation and TEC variations are
desired, it is better to use an elevation cut-off of 20 degrees,
however, we have used 15 degrees elevation cut-off. As cited
by many researchers [4], [14], the ΔTEC is linked with the
occurrence of amplitude and phase variations in the signal. The
bottom graph in each satellite case (i. e., TEC variations graph)
does not show a great variations in ΔTEC, so this further
confirms that there may not be higher scintillation present that
can be observed at the receiver.
The study presented in Fig. 7 was done when there was
no geomagentic storm. This study just shows that how the
scintillation pattern can look like over Sukkur, Pakistan. It can
be deduced that even during a geomagnetic storm conditions,
there is a high probability of amplitude scintillation as compared
to the phase scintillation. This study can be further extended
during both the geomagnetic and non-geomagnetic storm
conditions.
C ONCLUSION
This paper has presented the occurrence patterns of ampli-
tude and phase scintillation acitivty over Pakistan by logging
real time GPS data over Sukkur, Pakistan. A very descriptive
study starting from logging to recording to analyzing the
scintillation data and the parameters used in the estimation
of scintillation and TEC has been discussed along with its
mathematical description. The low variations in the time rate of
change of TEC has shows that during calm geomagnetic storm
conditions, there may be a very little chance of observing high
scintillation. The study presented in this paper is based on one
day but a careful attention has been taken to make sure that the
values estimated by the receiver depicts a true picture of the
amplitude and phase scintillation by discarding signals of the
satellites that are below 15o elevation angle to avoid multipath
effects. The trends of the scintillation occurrence pattern shows
that Pakistan is more likely to be affected by the amplitude
scintillation as compared to the phase scintillation. Although,
the study also uses the lock time of the receiver but due to weak
scintillation, it cannot be concluded from this study that what
scintillation range will lead to effect the receiver performance
in terms of loss of lock.
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