Abstract
Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have become a primary navigation means for aircraft. However, the signal power of GNSS is very weak, and its service can be disrupted at any time when there is interference or jamming. For this reason, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the United States has recently chosen a distance measuring equipment (DME)-based aircraft navigation technique, called DME/DME, as an alternative aircraft navigation means for use by around 2030. The reason that the FAA plans to use DME/DME in such a short duration, by around 2030, is presumed to be because the ranging accuracy of DMEs is between 70 to 300 m, which is about 7 to 30 times worse than that of GNSS. Thus, a significant loss of positioning performance is unavoidable with current DMEs. To make DME/DME a more competent alternative positioning source, this paper proposes an advanced DME that could provide a ranging accuracy of around 30 m by employing a recently developed Stretched-Front-Leg (SFOL) pulse. The paper introduces optimal ground station augmentation algorithms that help to efficiently transform the current DME ground network to enable a DME/DME positioning accuracy of up to 0.3 nm or 92.6 m with a minimal number of new ground DME sites. The positioning performance and augmented ground network using the proposed SFOL pulse-based DME are evaluated in two regions which have distinct terrain conditions.
Highlights
Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have been widely used for aircraft navigation, and their role will be more important in future air traffic control
Many clever approaches have been proposed for an APNT architecture, including wide area multilateration (WAM), GNSS-like pseudolites, distance measuring equipment-based navigation (DME/DME) [4,5], enhanced DME using a carrier phase [6], high-accuracy DME using alternative pulses [7,8], a mosaic DME/pseudolite hybrid system [9], and L-band Digital Aeronautical
Please note that HDOP depends on a ground network layout, and the ground network optimization algorithms discussed in Section 4 search for an efficient ground network layout that provides a targeted HDOP
Summary
Global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) have been widely used for aircraft navigation, and their role will be more important in future air traffic control. It must be able to continuously operate without being dependent on GNSS, and it should be able to serve various users such as commercial airliners, as well as general aviation Another important APNT system requirement is that its service should be compatible with the legacy users, as well as future users such as unmanned aircraft systems. Many clever approaches have been proposed for an APNT architecture, including wide area multilateration (WAM), GNSS-like pseudolites, distance measuring equipment-based navigation (DME/DME) [4,5], enhanced DME using a carrier phase [6], high-accuracy DME using alternative pulses [7,8], a mosaic DME/pseudolite hybrid system [9], and L-band Digital Aeronautical. To improve DME/DME positioning accuracy, the enhanced DME was proposed This method uses a DME carrier phase to measure the distance between aircraft and a ground DME transponder in centimeter levels of accuracy, which requires a more precise oscillator than the one used in today’s DME system.
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