Section: Application Domains

Plasmas

In the last decade, satellite-positioning devices have become one of the most powerful navigation assistance systems. Recently, Europe launched the first satellites of Galileo, a competitor to the constellation of satellites Navstar GPS American system. In order to guarantee the integrity service level, it is fundamental to take into account the various physical phenomena that can affect the mission and to identify all the potential sources of system unavailability. One of the main sources of data unavailability that has been identified is the phenomenon of ionospheric scintillations. Indeed scintillation causes radio frequency signal amplitude to fade and phase variations as satellite signals pass through the ionosphere. Such effects may induce loss of lock or cycle slips on ranging signals broadcast by Galileo satellites making them totally useless for accurate integrity information determination.