SCINDA-P2 Scintillation Netword Decision Aid Polar Scintillation Specification and Forecasting

Purpose:

The SCINDA-P2 (Scintillation Network Decision Aid-Polar 2) high-latitude scintillation nowcast system was conceived as an application of AFRL’s equatorial scintillation network decision aid (SCINDA) to the high latitude region. The basic philosophy of the SCINDA system is to detect scintillation with a limited number of real time sensors and then extrapolate the current and future location of F-region scintillation regions based on observed ionospheric drifts. Use of drift measurements allows a time series of single-point scintillation measurements to be mapped into the spatial domain, providing coverage over large geographic areas. 

Polar Phase I (SCINDA-P) was an initial high-latitude version of SCINDA which combined local convection information with GPS scintillation measurements to convert each penetration point into a one-dimensional “trail” of measurements.  Polar Phase II (SCINDA-P2) expands the model to make it possible to ingest data from multiple ground sites and allow realistic interpolation between measurements. 

Input: 

GPS data required for the model includes receiver location, UT time stamp, satellite identification number (PRN), satellite azimuth and elevation, relative TEC, and L1 S4.  If phase screen estimates of scintillation at other frequencies are desired, separate processing operating on high data-rate raw TEC measurements is required. 

While GPS is used for all scintillation measurements, convection information from the SuperDARN network is necessary to project the movement of measurement points and also determine the correct input parameters to the phase screen algorithm.  The correlation model is also binned by SuperDARN IMF values, so these parameters are also required as input to the model.  Lookup tables containing the binned model parameters are also needed.

Output: 

The final output of the model is a map of the high-latitude region showing scintillation levels for all areas within the model coverage, which will change depending on how many stations are available, what satellites are visible, what the statistical model gives for typical feature sizes and orientations, the age of data and convection speed, and what features are currently present. 

Following the lead of the original equatorial SCINDA model in operational use, we display regions of scintillation using a tri-color red-yellow-green scheme indicating severe, moderate, and low scintillation.  Regions without any color-coded scintillation values are out of the range of the model.  This could be because no satellite links were near enough for actual or modeled data points to be located there, or because the age of the data in that location was beyond the maximum cutoff (default of 1 hour).

Documents: (Adobe Acrobat PDF) 

Requirements Document

User's Guide

Design Document

Test Plan

Support Plan

Version Description

Installation Memo

The Application: Sample SCINDA Animation

For science comments/questions, contact T. Pederson, AFRL For software comments/questions, contact L. Nguyen, JHU/APL