European GPS Monitoring System for the RVSM Monitoring Program

Y. Hoffmeister-Han and T. Wieneke

Abstract:	The EUROCONTROL Agency, as managing agent for the European Air Traffic Management Program (EATMP), is coordinating an international program of work aimed at a reduction in vertical separation between FL290 and FL410 in the ECAC (European Civil Aviation Conference) area. This program is a key part of the strategy for the ECAC area to provide increased air traffic capacity as well as enabling airlines to reduce their operating costs by operating aircraft at or closer to their optimum flight levels. New standards for intrinsic aircraft performance, called Minimum Aircraft System Performance Specifications (MASPS), will be the fundamental means of ensuring height-keeping accuracy. To validate the height-keeping performance of individual aircraft an autonomous and mobile monitoring system is needed that can be temporarily placed on the target aircraft. For this purpose a GPS Monitoring System was developed by Aerodata Flugmesstechnik GmbH under contract of EUROCONTROL Agency. The GMS consists of two components: the mobile unit and the ground post-processing station. During a normal flight operation, the mobile unit records the aircraft's altitude transmitted via transponder and the GPS raw data received by two independent receivers. In order to provide satellite visibility, two GPS antennas are attached on left and right hand side of the cockpit windows. After data transfer to the ground station the GPS raw data are processed to give comparable results. The transponder data of the aircraft is compared to the calculated DGPS altitude data. For this purpose the GPS correction data of a wide area DGPS-service (WADGPS) is used. This paper provides an overview of the GMS concept, algorithm, the developed components and final test results.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000) September 19 - 22, 2000 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	743 - 752
Cite this article:	Hoffmeister-Han, Y., Wieneke, T., "European GPS Monitoring System for the RVSM Monitoring Program," Proceedings of the 13th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2000), Salt Lake City, UT, September 2000, pp. 743-752.
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