Navigation Applications of Space Based ADS-B Information

Kurzfassung

The Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) is seen as an important technology to improve Air Traffic Surveillance (ATS) and Air Traffic Control (ATC) capabilities. Today, ADS-B is an established technology, globally and widely used in continental airspace. Since 2008 the German Aerospace Center (DLR) started to prove that 1090ES ADS-B signals broadcasted by aircraft can be received on board of low earth orbiting (LEO) satellites. This was validated in 2013 by world's first in-orbit demonstration of a space-based ADS-B system, hosted on the ESA satellite PROBA-V. The introduction of space-based ADS-B opens new opportunities, e.g. by complementing and enhancing the existing terrestrial ADS-B. Today, several commercial service providers are operating LEO constellations and offering the service of their received ADS-B data. Several new constellations are planned. In this context new services to use the space-based data and to fuse them with other data from ground based surveillance systems are being discussed. So-space based ADS-B data can be fused with ground based ADS-B and radar surveillance data to obtain a higher level of situational awareness in the airspace. This is of increasing interest in the vicinity of airports where still some surveillance lacks might exist which can be filled-up by space data.