LPV: New, Improved WAAS Instrument Approach

Hank Cabler, and Bruce DeCleene

Abstract:	LPV approaches exploit the higher accuracy the FAA's GPS Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) offers. The WAAS signal will allow operators to have lateral guidance with the accuracy of the typical ILS localizer. This degree of accuracy is a tremendous improvement over the usual non-precision approach, and will allow many IFR approaches to be flown to a height above touchdown of 250'. The FAA has taken this improved capability and built a new family of aircraft instrument approaches called "LPV." These new approaches do not require any additional equipment at the intended destination. In fact, these new approaches will provide instrument landing approaches at 5,000 runways that were without approaches-without requiring one single new piece of equipment! The horizontal alert limit (HAL) of 40 meters provides the equivalent capability of the localizer portion of the current Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach. Recently a typical ILS cost more than $1,000,000 to install at each runway. The LPV approach provides lateral guidance on a par with ILS, and vertical guidance that is only slightly less accurate than ILS. As far as cost, the only cost for this capability will involve charting and procedure development, and the typical $1,000,000 cost for ILS equipment and installation is saved. LPV's most important benefit is not just improved minima, but the fact that it will bring new vertically- guided instrument procedures to several thousand new runways-runways that would normally not have an instrument approach. Many of these runways are at smaller airfields that are oriented toward the general aviation community. The LPV concept has been recently developed, and the FAA was quick to realize the immense benefit that it will provide, particularly to general aviation and to the thousands of second and third-tier airports throughout the United States.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002) September 24 - 27, 2002 Oregon Convention Center Portland, OR
Pages:	1013 - 1021
Cite this article:	Cabler, Hank, DeCleene, Bruce, "LPV: New, Improved WAAS Instrument Approach," Proceedings of the 15th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 2002), Portland, OR, September 2002, pp. 1013-1021.
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