Scintillation Occurrences and Analysis

What is Scintillation?

From past several centuries’ educators who are actively

interested and keen to known the truth and hidden knowledge
of nature and sky upon us have observed sparkling light like
crystals spreaded across the sky in the backdrop. Twinkling
effect gives beautiful effect on the vast open skies. The
astronomers were very much inspired from this strange
phenomenon.

This phenomena is termed as Scintillation, the technical term

for the twinkling of stars, is defined as the rapid and irregular
variation of intensity of celestial objects. [5]

Scintillation is although appears beautiful of the sky lines but it

has negative impact on astronomy. Relatively small fractions of
S to the order of 0.04 to the incident energy E is converted into
N fluorescence photons of mean energy Ep, which provide the
scintillation.

The fluctuation in amplitude and phase caused are termed and

classified as scintillation. Thereby it is stated that Scintillation refers
to the rapid fluctuation in signal amplitude and phase often observed
on satellite links. These fluctuations are caused by random spatial
and temporal changes of the atmosphere’s radio refractive index
within the link’s first Fresnel ellipsoid. Scintillation statistics are
necessary for experiment planning and in design of signal processing
procedures. [1]

Phase scintillation paused by propagation through solar wind,

ionosphere and troposphere irregularities is a noise process for
many spacecraft radio science experiments. In precision Doppler
tracking observation, scintillation can be the domain noise process.
[2]
A well known stellar scintillation phenomena that arises when
observing the stars through the earth atmosphere. The data
reliability is also required before analysis of the current that is
effect of the element of effectiveness. The scintillation emission is
same as fluorescence spectrum when modelled and its categorized
into different types depending upon the sky region is it effecting
such as equatorial scintillation, high latitude scintillation etc.

Scintillation Properties

• The absolute scintillation efficiency index S4 fallen data comm;

• The scintillation emission is spectrum;

• The scintillation has decay time Ƭ.

• Slow is scintillation component on the dependence of the pulse

shape on the nature of the incident radiation.

Scintillation Models

There are number of scintillation models for analyzing the effective

generated fluctuation caused.

• Global Ionospheric Scintillation Model (GISM)

• WBMOD Ionospheric Scintillation Model

• DPSP, MSP

• STH2, STN2 Model induced in sept

• STHV2, STHV2

Past Work

• GPS phase scintillation observed over a high-latitude Antarctic

station during solar minimum, Chigomezyo M.Ngwira a,b, Lee-
AnneMcKinnell a,b, PierreJ.Cilliers, 2010, Journal of
Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics , 72 (2010) 718–725
• Forecasting Ionospheric Real-time Scintillation Tool (FIRST)

Anderson, D. N.; Redmon, R.; Bullett, T.; Caton, R. G.;

Retterer, J. M.

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2009, abstract

#SA11B- 05

• Co-ordinated studies using imaging riometer and incoherent

scatter radar, Journal of Atmospheric and Solar- Terrestrail, P.
N. Collis* and J. K. Hargreaves, 1996, Physical Vol. 59. No. 8.
pp. 873 890. 1997

• Scintillation and cycle slips observed at high latitudes during

solar minimum, P. Prikryl1, P. T. Jayachandran2, S. C. Mushini2,
D. Pokhotelov2, J.W. MacDougall3, E. Donovan4, E. Spanswick4,
and J.-P. St.-Maurice5, June 2010, GPS TEC, Ann. Geophys., 28,
1307–1316, 2010

• Climatology of GNSS ionospheric scintillation at high latitudes,

L. Spogli, L. Alfonsi, G. De Franceschi, V. Romano, M. H. O.
Aquino, A. Dodson, 2008 American Geophysical Union, Fall
Meeting 2009, abstract #SM33A-1562

• ISACCO: an Italian project to monitor the high latitudes

ionosphere by means of GPS receivers, Giorgiana De Franceschi
Æ Lucilla Alfonsi Æ Vincenzo Romano, 2006, GPS Solut (2006)
10:263–267; DOI 10.1007/s10291-006-0036-6
Resources Available

Electromagnetism vs Non Electromagnetism

• The Rytov and Born Approximation

She showed that variances of logarithm amplitude variations should

be less than unity in all situations. The electromagnetism theory:

Born condition : (∞)^2 + (x)^2 < 1

Phase and amplitude should be less than 1 where ∞ denotes phase

and x amplitude.

• Longitudinal waves

Including sound waves as example (alternation in pressure, particle

displacement, or particle velocity propagated in an elastic material).
In this form the amplitude of the wave is pressure of the
undistributed wave and maximum pressure.
Prediction and Software

Name Input Outputs

Cornell Scintillation Model Coordinates Simulation

SCINDA (Scintillation Network Requires GPSStream of GPS

Decision) coordinate scintillation data
values from the server.

NWR Ionospheric Scintillation - Stores all the

Predictions recorded data
from Nasa.

Model-Based Prediction of Amplitude Radio Graphs

Scintillation Variance Sounding Data

Haystack InterPlanetary Scintillation Frequency Scans the beam,

Software band record data

SimGEN Coordinates Simulation

Scintillation Prediction Using Pre-processed Structure

Improved Pre-Processed radiosonde constant C2n of
Radiosounding Data data the troposphere

A Forecasting Ionospheric Real-time Coordinates Graphs

Scintillation Tool (FIRST)

References

1) GURVICH Alexandre ; CHUNCHUZOV Igor ; “ Estimates of

characteristics scales in the spectrum of internal waves in the
 stratosphere obtained from the space observations of stellar
scintillation” : Journal of Geophysics research ISSN 0148-0227
2005, vol. 110

2) E.N Bramley; “The accuracy of computing ionosphere radio-

wave scintillation by the thin-phase-screen approximation”:
Journal of Atmospheric and Terrestrial Physics Volume 39, Issue
3, March 1977

3) Armstrong, J. W. (1998), “ Radio wave phase scintillation and

precision Doppler tracking of spacecraft” , Radio Sci., 33(6),
1727–1738, doi:10.1029/98RS02317.

4) Canadian High Artic Ionospheric Network

http://chain.physics.unb.ca ; Date Accessed 22 Dec 2010

5) Jayachandran, P. T., et al. (2009), Canadian High Arctic Ionospheric

Network (CHAIN), Radio Sci., 44, RS0A03, doi:10.1029/2008RS004046

6) Imaging Riometer for Ionospheric Studies

http://www.dcs.lancs. ac.uk/iono/iris/ Date Accessed: 20-Dec-
2010

7) M. Colleen Gino “ http://www.astrophys-

assist.com/educate/starry/starrynight.htm ”

Date Accessed : 05/01/2011