A unified vector electromagnetic framework for ionospheric scintillation and polarization effects in GNSS

Abstract

The ionosphere imposes coupled amplitude, phase, and polarization distortions on transionospheric Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, reflecting the structure and dynamics of electron-density irregularities. Classical weak-scatter theory provides a mature framework for interpreting amplitude and phase scintillation, but these quantities have almost exclusively been treated as scalars. In contrast, the electromagnetic field is inherently vectorial: its two orthogonal polarization components carry additional information about propagation through a magnetized plasma. A unified treatment that incorporates this vector structure has been largely absent from standard GNSS scintillation analyses. This work develops a GNSS-specific Jones-Stokes electromagnetic framework that embeds Faraday rotation and its fluctuations within the same physical framework used to describe amplitude and phase scintillation. The approach yields a polarization scintillation metric derived from the detrended Faraday angle, exposes frequency-normalized relations that enable cross-band consistency checks, and provides a TEC-normalized estimator of the electron-density-weighted line-of-sight magnetic-field component—a physically consistent basis for exploring GNSS-based Faraday-rotation magnetometry. By extending scintillation analysis from scalar to vector diagnostics, this formulation reveals additional scientific opportunities for remote sensing ionospheric anisotropy, magnetic-field coupling, and irregularity morphology, and offers operational potential for improved space weather monitoring using existing GNSS infrastructure.