A proposed index for measuring ionospheric scintillation

Signals from radio star sources and satellites are regularly used for studying ionospheric irregularities. Amplitude and phase deviations can be imposed on the signals from these sources as they traverse the ionosphere. A parameter frequently used to describe the magnitude of this scintillation effect is scintillation index. An experiment was designed to correlate various methods of making scintillation measurements; observations were made at 40 MHz using the ionospheric beacon, S-66. It is shown that when the law of the receiver detector is known, a conversion method allows comparison of data and statistics on scintillation index. A simplified method of scaling scintillation index is described. The accuracy of the simplified method is determined by a comparison with measurements of scintillation index by machine computation.