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Satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) provide augmentation to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) users in three areas: (1) broadcasting accurate corrections to GNSS satellite ephemeris, (2) providing a real-time empirical ionospheric model in the service area, and (3) providing integrity information in the form of estimates of the confidence of the ephemeris corrections and ionospheric delays. Ionospheric effects on SBAS are twofold: (a) the input data used by the SBAS will be affected by ionospheric effects, and (b) the more perturbed the ionosphere is, the more difficult it will be to provide accurate and reliable ionospheric information to the users. The ionosphere at low latitudes presents larger variability and more intense phenomena than at midlatitudes. Therefore, SBAS providing service to low-latitude regions will be more affected than those at other latitudes. From the different low-latitude ionospheric effects, this paper will focus on those having the largest impact on SBAS, which are total electron content temporal and spatial gradients, ionospheric scintillations, and depletions. This paper will present the impact of these effects on EGNOS (European Global Navigation Overlay System), the European SBAS. Although EGNOS can be considered as a midlatitude SBAS, it has to provide coverage down to rather low latitudes, so sometimes low-latitude ionospheric effects are observed in the EGNOS data. It will be shown how EGNOS performs under nominal conditions and how its performance is degraded when low-latitude ionospheric phenomena occur. Real EGNOS data affected by low-latitude ionospheric phenomena will be used.

Plasma depletions (or bubbles) are strong reductions in the ionospheric F-region plasma density due to the appearance of a Rayleigh–Taylor instability in the post-sunset, producing severe radio signal disruptions when crossing them. Most of the plasma depletions are confined on the Appleton Anomaly region, which also shows the presence of strong scintillations activity. Therefore, stations located in the vicinity of the geomagnetic equator are expected to be frequently affected by the presence of plasma depletions. This paper provides a comparison between the plasma depletion detection results achieved using two algorithms: one developed by the National Institute for Aerospace Technology and the University Complutense of Madrid and one developed by GMV. Six equatorial stations distributed all over the world and different solar activity and seasonal conditions have been selected to analyze the algorithms’ response to different plasma depletions characteristics. A regional behavior analysis of the plasma depletion occurrence and characteristics is also provided.

The Global Positioning System (GPS) observables are affected by the ionosphere. The dispersive nature of this effect and the use of two frequencies in the GPS observations make possible to measure the ionospheric total electron content (TEC) from dual frequency GPS data. In this work we test the concept of permanent monitoring of TEC using a network of GPS receivers at high latitudes. We have used GPS data from five permanent receivers in Scandinavia, from 1-30 January 1994, with geographic latitudes ranging from 57.4°N to 78.9°N. The results show the capability of the method to monitor the evolution of TEC as a function of time and geographical location. We have detected night-time enhancements almost every night for some of the stations, and we have also been able to produce maps of the instantaneous TEC as a function of both latitude and longitude around the GPS network. We also present some of the current limitations in the use of GPS for estimating TEC at high latitudes such as the difficulties in solving for cycle-slips, and the necessity of reliable values for the receiver and satellite differential instrumental biases.

The ionospheric effect is one of the main sources of error in Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and Global Positioning System (GPS) high precision geodesy. Although the use of two frequencies allows the estimation of this effect, in some cases dual observations are not possible due to the available equipment or the type of observation. This paper presents the ionospheric calibration of single frequency VLBI and GPS observations based on the ionospheric electron content estimated from dual frequency GPS data. The ionospheric delays obtained with this procedure and the VLBI baseline length results have been compared with those obtained with dual frequency data. For the European geodetic VLBI baselines, both solutions agree at the 3–5 parts in 10−9 level. The noise introduced by the GPS-based calibration is in the order of 3 cm for the VLBI observables and of 10 cm for the GPS observables.