GENERAL AVIATION ALTIMETRY ERRORS FOR COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEMS

A. D. Mundra

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	Altimetry data is the prime component of monitoring reliable vertical separation of aircraft. This report compiles raw data gathered in flight tests conducted by the National Aviation Facilities Experimental Center of the Federal Aviation Administration. The compilation yields histograms of the errors in automatically reported altitude and errors in indicated altitude for general aviation aircraft in the U.S. The Federal Aviation Administration is currently considering two fully automatic collision avoidance systems: Automated Traffic Advisory and Resolution Service and Beacon-based Collision Avoidance System. Besides, the automatically reported altitude is being increasingly used in automation in the Air Traffic System, as exemplified by the current implementation of Conflict Alert in the en route air space. The magnitude of error in the transponder reported altitude affects the performance of any automated collision avoidance system. In this paper, the impact of the errors in reported altitude on expected alert rates for automatic collision avoidance systems are analysed. It is shown that acceptable collision avoidance service is feasible with a threshold criterion of vertical coincidence which is less than 500 ft. The quality of separation assurance protection from the general aviation population that an individual pilot may expect to receive is assessed as a function of the error in his own automatically reported altitude.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 26, Number 4
Pages:	267 - 274
Cite this article:	Mundra, A. D., "GENERAL AVIATION ALTIMETRY ERRORS FOR COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEMS", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 26, No. 4, Winter 1979-1980, pp. 267-274.
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