2024/09/12 by Jishnu N. Thekkeppattu, Thekkeppattu, Jishnu N.
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Earthquake Detection and Analysis #FOS: Physical sciences #GNSS positioning and interference #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Space Physics (physics.space-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2409.07758
openalex publication_date 2024/09/12 · openalex created_date 2024/10/23 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Scintillations of radio frequency signals due to the ionosphere, despite having been studied for decades, is still an active area of research. Of particular interest is the scintillations near the geomagnetic equator, where such scintillations can be strong enough to cause disruptions to satellite communications. In this paper, a low cost system to monitor VHF scintillations is described. The system called the Personal Ionospheric Experiment (PIE) makes use of a widely available software defined radio (SDR) to perform the measurements. The use of an SDR vastly enhances the flexibility, especially in environments with non-negligible radio frequency interference (RFI). A simple technique to effectively subtract out transient RFI commonly found in radio data is detailed, and tested with data collected over several months. The utility of the proposed system is demonstrated with the analysis of a night-time scintillation patch; a few daytime scintillations are also reported. Therefore this paper demonstrates the feasibility of conducting useful low-cost radio science experiments in semi-urban locations with RFI, encouraging similar citizen science initiatives.