Robust Kalman Filter Design for Predictive Wind Shear Detection

Authors’ address: Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540. An aircraft can deviate disastrously from its intended flight path if strong, varying wind (wind shear) is encountered near the ground. Severe low-altitude wind shear, such as produced by the microburst, has caused at least 24 aviation accidents in the last 25 years [l]. Efforts are underway to combat severe wind shear, including flight crew training [2], guidance strategies for wind shear encounter [3-51, and meteorological study of wind shear [MI. Ground-based sensor systems to measure airport-vicinity winds are being developed and installed at major airports [9, 101. While on-board reactive sensors are capable of detecting wind shear once it is encountered by an aircraft [ l l , 121, on-board forward-looking sensors are capable of sensing the winds directly in front of the aircraft, permitting a predictive detection of wind shear [13-151. The refinement of techniques for predictive wind shear detection is the topic of this work.