Online Atmosphere Monitoring Concept with ATC Interface

Thomas Feuerle, Mirko Stanisak, Meiko Steen, Peter Hecker

Abstract:	Future Air Traffic Management applications will have a great dependency on GNSS. There are not only positioning applications which need high integrity values for safety critical operations like landing in adverse weather. In the Air Traffic System Roadmaps both of SESAR and NextGEN, the majority of systems and applications will be based on services which need threeor even four-dimensional accuracy, see [1] for example. This can be achieved almost only with GNSS applications. This paper will describe an approach where low-cost GPS receivers with a dense distribution especially in the vicinity of airports will be used as a combined ionosphere and atmosphere monitoring and displaying system for Air Traffic Control (ATC) purposes (GIMS – GPS and Ionosphere Monitoring System). The GPS receivers, which are intended to be used, are already available and are used so far for timing issues of ground based positioning systems. These systems are already connected to the ATC information network and have to deliver relevant air traffic data in real-time to at least one ATC center. When using these ground stations only some minor software changes inside these distributed stations are needed to get access to the raw-data of the GPS receivers. The raw-data then can be transferred to a central processing unit, where the local GPS performance and integrity can be monitored. To reach the goal of integrity monitoring, a special approach of comparing the results of the single reference receivers has been developed. The main purpose of this system wide comparison (filtering) is to identify and exclude faulty receivers, so that only disturbances of the signal path of GPS signals will lead to an alarm message of the monitoring system. The intention of the described approach is not to develop an ionosphere or atmosphere model but to have real-time monitoring capabilities within the ATC system. Beneath the monitoring system approach, a possible ATC controller display will be presented.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 2010 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation January 25 - 27, 2010 Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	306 - 313
Cite this article:	Feuerle, Thomas, Stanisak, Mirko, Steen, Meiko, Hecker, Peter, "Online Atmosphere Monitoring Concept with ATC Interface," Proceedings of the 2010 International Technical Meeting of The Institute of Navigation, San Diego, CA, January 2010, pp. 306-313.
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