530: Propagation Environmental Effects on GNSS

For precise positioning and many other applications, it is important to know the potential impact of atmospheric phenomena and how to mitigate these effects. This course addresses the atmospheric, solar and geomagnetic conditions that can degrade the quality of GNSS data and positioning accuracies. Techniques are presented for avoiding, modeling and correcting for these effects.

Dr. Susan Skone
University of Calgary

Tropospheric Errors
• Variability of troposphere
• Tropospheric refractivity and range delay
• Tropospheric correction models
• Mapping functions
Tropospheric Water Vapour Estimation
• Zenith wet delay
• Slant wet delay
• 4-D estimation — tomography techniques
• Occultations
• GPS/GNSS meteorology
Ionospheric Error Effects
• Basic ionospheric facts for GNSS users
• Solar cycle, seasonal and geographic variability of ionospheric
effects
• Solar maximum, ionospheric storms, geomagnetic activity, space
weather

Ionosphere Range Delay Corrections
• Broadcast ionospheric model, state-of-the art model
• Wide area real-time models, WAAS corrections
• Dual frequency ionospheric corrections — the optimal solution
• Modeling errors
Scintillation Effects on GPS Signals
• Signal loss due to amplitude fading
• Phase scintillation; frequency fluctuations
• Geographic and temporal variability of scintillations
• Receiver tests
The Future of GPS and the Ionosphere
• Status of solar cycle
• Real-time space weather predictions
• New L5 frequency, use of multiple GNSS S/C and signals
• Space-based augmentation systems
• Summary

Level: Basic knowledge of GPS and DGPS operation is assumed, as well as some understanding of estimation, statistics and signal processing. 110A&B or equivalent are recommended.