Abstract
Arriving on time is of great importance for flight management and passenger experience. One of the essential factors that impacts on-time arrival is the wind condition. Accurate information of wind speed and direction around the fuselage helps to improve the performance of on-time arrival and four-dimensional trajectory (4DT) planning. To determine accurate wind information in real-time, a novel airborne estimation method of wind speed and direction is proposed in this paper. Inertial Navigation System (INS), Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS), and Air Data System (ADS) are fused in an Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF), which provides great accuracy and robustness in nonlinearity conditions. The dynamic models of wind are established, and implementations of the UKF are detailed. Finally, simulations are designed and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through the comparison with the traditional direct measurement method. Results demonstrate that the accuracy of wind speed and direction obtained by our method is nearly two times higher than the traditional direct measurement method.
Highlights
The estimation of instantaneous wind speed and direction at the location of the aircraft can be a significant problem due to the inevitable presence of wind in the flying
The work introduced is to deduce the estimation formulas of three-dimensional wind speed and direction based on the measurements from airborne Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS), the output results of Inertial Navigation System (INS), and the information of airspeed, angle of attack, and sideslip angle provided by an Air Data System (ADS)
Ow is at the center of gravity and fixed connection with aircraft body; Xw is pointing at the direction of airspeed Va; Zw is in the plane of symmetry of the aircraft, perpendicular to the Xw and pointing below the fuselage; and Yb is defined by the right-hand rule
Summary
The estimation of instantaneous wind speed and direction at the location of the aircraft can be a significant problem due to the inevitable presence of wind in the flying. Taylor presented a simulation study of parameter estimation techniques for air data calibration and wind estimation [23] This method assumes that the inertial velocities and Euler angles are accurate, that the calibration models are correct, and that the steady-state component of wind is constant throughout the maneuver. The work introduced is to deduce the estimation formulas of three-dimensional wind speed and direction based on the measurements from airborne Global Satellite Navigation System (GNSS), the output results of Inertial Navigation System (INS), and the information of airspeed, angle of attack, and sideslip angle provided by an Air Data System (ADS). The contribution of this work is that it provides an innovative method based on UKF for real-time and accurate estimation of wind field information around aircraft, as well as navigation, position, and flow angle information.
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