Demand-based Placement of LDACS Ground Stations to Achieve RNP 0.3 Accuracy for APNT

Abstract

Regions with dense air traffic has lower separation between aircrafts to maintain the throughput. Terminal area generally requires high throughput and some of the airports need to maintain 3 nmi separation between two aircrafts. To provide 3 nmi separation RNP 0.3 is required. In this paper we propose two possible ways to fulfill RNP 0.3 NSE requirement using LDACS as an alternate system. The first way is to use LDACS in standalone configuration and the other way is to use a hybrid configuration, where position solution is obtained using LDACS combined with DME. The results show that both the proposed methods, standalone and hybrid configuration fulfill RNP 0.3 NSE requirement. Where standalone configuration is more accurate than hybrid, due to the low ranging error of LDACS system. For our analysis the surveillance data for terminal area of Munich and Frankfurt airports were used. In standalone configuration 5 LDACS stations for Frankfurt and 6 LDACS stations for Munich are sufficient to fulfill RNP 0.3 NSE requirement. In hybrid mode both Frankfurt and Munich only need 3 LDACS stations.