Earth’s atmosphere disrupts signals transmitted by Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). In certain regions of the Earth, these signals can be severely degraded. Not much research has been done on what could potentially happen to GNSS signals at mid-latitude regions of the Earth. It is important to gain a better understanding of the impacts mid-latitude regions can have on GNSS signals, in preparation for potential future outages across the system. The United States and Russia have had Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology for decades. Today, China and Europe are expanding their global positioning systems. In the future there may be up to one hundred or more satellites available for public usage. This study was done to determine if outages could potentially occur at mid-latitudes, and to gain more knowledge on which of these satellite constellations have the best service.

Scintillation of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) signals have been extensively studied at low and high latitude regions of the Earth. It has been shown in past studies that amplitude scintillation is severe at low latitudes and phase scintillation is severe at high latitudes. Unlike low and high latitude regions, mid-latitude scintillation has not been extensively studied. Further, it has been suggested that mid-latitude scintillation is negligible. The purpose of this research is to challenge this belief. A multi-constellation and multi-frequency receiver, that tracks American, Russian, and European satellites, was used to monitor scintillation activity at the Virginia Tech Space Center. Analysis was performed on collected data from various days and compared to past research done at high, mid, and low latitudes. The results are discussed in this thesis.

Master of Science