OPTIMAL AND SUBOPTIMAL METHODS OF SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE FOR TRAFFIC CONTROL OF TRANSOCEANIC FLIGHTS

Herbert Winter

Peer Reviewed

Abstract:	The increasing density of traffic over the oceans, particularly the North Atlantic, together with the desire to fly as close as possible to a fuel-optimum path, makes an accurate surveillance system that will assure adequate separation of aircraft desirable in the near future. The system described here uses two synchronous equatorial satellites. Aircraft location is determined by measuring the range of the aircraft to each satellite as well as iarcraft altitude, and transmitting this information periodically to a ground station. There, the aircraft's geoographic position at the time of transmission is computed. This information is then combined with past position measurements in a suboptimal filter to determine aircraft position and velocity (the velocity being used to estimate aircraft position between transmissions). The suboptimal filter is a simplification of the optimal Kalman filter. Except for altitude information, the system is independent of the aircraft navigation system. Error sources include aircraft acceleration due to wind gusts, satellite range measurement erros (including multipath errors), aircraft altitude error, and satellite location error. The effects of each of these error are presented in graphs.
Published in:	NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 18, Number 4
Pages:	417 - 424
Cite this article:	Winter, Herbert, "OPTIMAL AND SUBOPTIMAL METHODS OF SATELLITE SURVEILLANCE FOR TRAFFIC CONTROL OF TRANSOCEANIC FLIGHTS", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter 1971-1972, pp. 417-424.
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