FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Test Concepts for Early Implementation

Robert Till, William Wanner, Robert Loh

Abstract:	The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has initiated a program to implement a Global Positioning System (GPS) Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) to provide improved integrity, accuracy, and availability for all phases of flight through Category I precision approaches. The WAAS requires a network of ground reference stations, all connected to master stations, which then broadcast the WAAS messages to aircraft through geostationary satellite transponders. The objective of this paper is to briefly describe the WAAS concepts, the phased acquisition plan, and the evolutionary implementation plan for use of the WAAS in the National Airspace System (NAS). To complement that process, a matching concept and strategy has been developed for testing and verifying the WAAS during the acquisition and implementation phases. A very important part of the strategy is the test and verification for use of WAAS as an approach overlay to existing Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) procedures. This will ensure operational procedures will be available to meet the scheduled implementation of the WAAS. In order to shorten the implementation scheduling by several years, the WAAS is being implemented differently from previous FAA acquisitions. An important part of this implementation is the concurrent testing and verification, which should result in an operational capability in 1997. Three different capabilities are described in this paper: a. The navigation satellite test bed. b. The functional verification system (FVS). c. The WAAS simulator. All will be simultaneously used for testing and verifying the WAAS.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994) September 20 - 23, 1994 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	773 - 781
Cite this article:	Till, Robert, Wanner, William, Loh, Robert, "FAA's Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) Test Concepts for Early Implementation," Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994), Salt Lake City, UT, September 1994, pp. 773-781.
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