Ionospheric Scintillations of vhf Radio Signals from Satellites at Ahmedabad

Abstract

The Faraday fading records of radio beacons from low orbiting satellites Explorer 22 and 27 recorded at Ahmedabad are analyzed for the occurrence of scintillations. The temporal variation of the scintillations shows a maximum around midnight, and seasonally, scintillations arc most common during summer months. Latitudinally, the scintillation index increases towards the equator and Ahmedabad seems to lie at the edge of the low latitude scintillation belt. During daytime, scintillations at Ahmedabad are shown to be associated with the sporadic-E and the scintillation index increases linearly with the <i>f</i>_oEs.