Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) provide pilots with a virtual visual depiction of the external environment. When using SVS for aircraft precision approach guidance systems accurate positioning relative to the runway with a high level of integrity is required. Precision approach guidance systems in use today require ground-based electronic navigation components with at least one installation at each airport, and in many cases multiple installations to service approaches to all qualifying runways. A terrain-referenced approach guidance system is envisioned to provide precision guidance to an aircraft without the use of ground-based electronic navigation components installed at the airport. This autonomy makes it a good candidate for integration with an SVS. At the Ohio University Avionics Engineering Center (AEC), work has been underway in the development of such a terrain referenced navigation system. When used in conjunction with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and a high accuracy/resolution terrain database, this terrain referenced navigation system can provide navigation and guidance information to the pilot on a SVS or conventional instruments.
The terrain referenced navigation system, under development at AEC, operates on similar principles as other terrain
navigation systems: a ground sensing sensor (in this case an airborne laser scanner) gathers range measurements to the
terrain; this data is then matched in some fashion with an onboard terrain database to find the most likely position
solution and used to update an inertial sensor-based navigator. AEC's system design differs from today's common
terrain navigators in its use of a high resolution terrain database (~1 meter post spacing) in conjunction with an airborne
laser scanner which is capable of providing tens of thousands independent terrain elevation measurements per second
with centimeter-level accuracies. When combined with data from an inertial navigator the high resolution terrain
database and laser scanner system is capable of providing near meter-level horizontal and vertical position estimates.
Furthermore, the system under development capitalizes on 1) The position and integrity benefits provided by the Wide
Area Augmentation System (WAAS) to reduce the initial search space size and; 2) The availability of high
accuracy/resolution databases. This paper presents results from flight tests where the terrain reference navigator is used
to provide guidance cues for a precision approach.
To enable safe use of Synthetic Vision Systems at low altitudes, real-time range-to-terrain measurements may be required to ensure the integrity of terrain models stored in the system. This paper reviews and extends previous work describing the application of x-band radar to terrain model integrity monitoring. A method of terrain feature extraction and a transformation of the features to a common reference domain are proposed. Expected error distributions for the extracted features are required to establish appropriate thresholds whereby a consistency-checking function can trigger an alert. A calibration-based approach is presented that can be used to obtain these distributions. To verify the approach, NASA's DC-8 airborne science platform was used to collect data from two mapping sensors. An Airborne Laser Terrain Mapping (ALTM) sensor was installed in the cargo bay of the DC-8. After processing, the ALTM produced a reference terrain model with a vertical accuracy of less than one meter. Also installed was a commercial-off-the-shelf x-band radar in the nose radome of the DC-8. Although primarily designed to measure precipitation, the radar also provides estimates of terrain reflectivity at low altitudes. Using the ALTM data as the reference, errors in features extracted from the radar are estimated. A method to estimate errors in features extracted from the terrain model is also presented.
This paper discusses flight test results of a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) integrity monitor. The DEM Integrity Monitor Experiment (DIME) was part of the NASA Synthetic Vision System (SVS) flight trials at Eagle-Vail, Colorado (EGE) in August/September, 2001. SVS provides pilots with either a Heads-down Display (HDD) or a Heads-up Display (HUD) containing aircraft state, guidance and navigation information, and a virtual depiction of the terrain as viewed 'from the cockpit'. SVS has the potential to improve flight safety by increasing the situational awareness (SA) in low to near zero-visibility conditions to a level of awareness similar to daytime clear-weather flying. This SA improvement not only enables low-visibility operations, but may also reduce the likelihood of Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT). Because of the compelling nature of SVS displays high integrity requirements may be imposed on the various databases used to generate the imagery on the displays even when the target SVS application does not require an essential or flight-critical integrity level. DIME utilized external sensors (WAAS and radar altimeter) to independently generate a 'synthesized' terrain profile. A statistical assessment of the consistency between the synthesized profile and the profile as stored in the DEM provided a fault-detection capability. The paper will discuss the basic DIME principles and will show the DIME performance for a variety of approaches to Runways 7 and 25 at EGE. The monitored DEMs are DTED Level 0, USGS with a 3-arcsec spatial resolution, and a DEM provided by NASA Langley. The test aircraft was a Boeing 757-200.
This paper discusses the flight test results of a real-time Digital Elevation Model (DEM) integrity monitor for Civil Aviation applications. Providing pilots with Synthetic Vision displays containing terrain information has the potential to improve flight safety by improving situational awareness and thereby reducing the likelihood of Controlled Flight Into Terrain. Utilization of DEMs, such as the digital terrain elevation data, requires a DEM integrity check and timely integrity alerts to the pilots when used for flight-critical terrain-displays, otherwise the DEM may provide hazardous misleading terrain information. The discussed integrity monitor checks the consistency between a terrain elevation profile synthesized from sensor information, and the profile given in the DEM. The synthesized profile is derived from DGPS and radar altimeter measurements. DEMs of various spatial resolutions are used to illustrate the dependency of the integrity monitor's performance on the DEMs spatial resolution. The paper will give a description of proposed integrity algorithms, the flight test setup, and the results of a flight test performed at the Ohio University airport and in the vicinity of Asheville, NC.
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