VDES R-Mode Flight Experiments

Abstract

Aircraft navigation nowadays relies heavily on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs). As they can be subject to jamming, spoofing, and other outages, this reliance presents a risk to safe navigation. We investigate whether the VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) R-Mode can be used on board of aircraft. VDES R-Mode is an alternative positioning, navigation and time (PNT) system to complement navigation information, primarily to support the maritime traffic. We describe a measurement campaign of VDES R-Mode signals transmitted in the port of Hamburg and received on an airplane flying at an altitude of about 400 m above the port of Hamburg. Further, we compare the positioning performance achieved during the flight experiments with previous results for VDES R-Mode. We found that we were able to achieve an accuracy better than 204 m 95% of the time despite encountering interference from other signals.