Abstract
In the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) performance based navigation strategy announced in 2016, the FAA stated that it would retain and expand the Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) infrastructure to ensure resilient aircraft navigation capability during the event of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) outage. However, the main drawback of the DME as a GNSS back up system is that it requires a significant expansion of the current DME ground infrastructure due to its poor distance measuring accuracy over 100 m. The paper introduces a method to improve DME distance measuring accuracy by using a new DME pulse shape. The proposed pulse shape was developed by using Genetic Algorithms and is less susceptible to multipath effects so that the ranging error reduces by 36.0–77.3% when compared to the Gaussian and Smoothed Concave Polygon DME pulses, depending on noise environment.
Highlights
It is well known that the signals used in Global Navigation Satellites Systems (GNSS) can be lost due to radio frequency interference [1,2,3,4,5] or ionospheric anomalies [6,7,8,9]
This study introduced an alternative Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) pulse, called a SFOL pulse, that could significantly mitigate multipath effects
The SFOL pulse was developed by applying Genetic Algorithms and its design methodology was presented in detail
Summary
It is well known that the signals used in Global Navigation Satellites Systems (GNSS) can be lost due to radio frequency interference [1,2,3,4,5] or ionospheric anomalies [6,7,8,9]. As modern air traffic control systems like the Generation Air Transportation System in the USA are heavily dependent on GNSS [10,11,12] to meet escalating air traffic demands, the vulnerability of GNSS has become a possible threat. For this reason, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has investigated possible Alternative Position, Navigation, and Timing (APNT) systems to maintain safe air traffic control operations during outages of GNSS.
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