Flight Experiment of GBAS in Japan

Shinji Saitoh, Sonosuke Fukusima and Naoki Fujii

Abstract:	Electronic Navigation Research Institute (ENRI) in Japan have been developing and evaluating Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) includes VHF Data Broadcast (VDB) system. We conducted flight experiments of the GBAS at Sendai airport. We installed temporarily an experimental GBAS ground station and executed the experiments in two types of procedure. One is level flights including orbit and arc flight patterns for checking the performance of the stacked array antenna for null effects, and the other is approach flights from 1,500 feet altitude for testing the total performance of GBAS system. The VDB system with horizontal polarization generally has a null problem. Therefore we made a stacked array antenna known for a solution of the null problem and installed it at Sendai airport. The ground station consisted of four sets of reference GPS antenna, GPS receiver and personal computer (PC), and a Work Station (WS) to generate GBAS augmentation messages. The experiments were carried out with Beechcraft B99 Airliner loaded a GBAS VDB receiver, a GPS receiver and a PC for computing its real-time differential GPS (DGPS) position and recording GBAS data. In the experiments, we also executed post-processed kinematic carrier-phase differential positioning to get reference positions. The results of flight to check the null problem showed deep nulls were reduced by the stacked array antenna and no message errors were detected in GBAS service area. In the approach flights, we carried out real-time DGPS positioning using GBAS augmentation information (GBAS-DGPS) and computed difference between realtime GBAS-DGPS position fixes and post-processed kinematic position fixes for evaluating positioning error of GBAS. Final result shows total positioning accuracy of our experimental system is nearly equal to CAT-III. This paper introduces our GBAS equipments and the flight test results about it.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 14th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2001) September 11 - 14, 2001 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	1757 - 1787
Cite this article:	Saitoh, Shinji, Fukusima, Sonosuke, Fujii, Naoki, "Flight Experiment of GBAS in Japan," Proceedings of the 14th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2001), Salt Lake City, UT, September 2001, pp. 1757-1787.
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