A ROTATED-COORDINATE GAUSSIAN POSITION RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM FOR THE MICROWAVE LANDING SYSTEM

F. D. Powell

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The Microwave Landing System (MLS) avionics convert the received signals of range, azimuth angle, and elevation angle to yield aircraft position in Cartesian coordinates relative to a point on the centerline of the selected runway. This enables area navigation, including multileg, curved, and computed centerline approaches. The MLS ground equipment transmitters may be sited in various arrangements relative to the runway; an iterative algorithm is required in the avionics to compute the correct approach path. The size and speed of the algorithm, and its computational burden, affect the MLS avionics storage and timing requirements. The principal candidate algorithms are Gauss-Seidel (GS) and Newton-Raphson (NR) types. The usual GS types may diverge within the minimum MLS coverage, while the NR types have problems with singularities and multiple solutions, need more storage, and impose a greater computational burden. This paper presents a GS algorithm which, by an ideal rotation of the coordinate system, enables fast convergence everywhere in the maximum MLS coverage.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 37, Number 3
Pages:	273 - 284
Cite this article:	Powell, F. D., "A ROTATED-COORDINATE GAUSSIAN POSITION RECONSTRUCTION ALGORITHM FOR THE MICROWAVE LANDING SYSTEM", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 37, No. 3, Fall 1990, pp. 273-284.
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