Design and Performance Analysis of a Low-cost Aided Dead Reckoning Navigator

The Federal Aviation Administration is leading the National Airspace System modernization effort, in part, by supplanting traditional air traffic services with the Global Positioning System (GPS) aided by the Wide and Local Area Augmentation Systems (WAAS & LAAS). Making GPS the primary-means of navigation will enhance safety, flexibility and efficiency of operations for all aircraft ranging from single engine general aviation aircraft to complex commercial jet-liners. This transformation of the National Airspace System will be gradual and the build-up to a primary-means GPS capability is expected to occur concurrently with the de-commissioning of a significant number of existing ground-based navigational facilities. If an alternate means of navigation is not available during this transition period, temporary interruptions of GPS services due to intentional or unintentional interference could present significant problems for aircraft lacking backup navigation capability. To successfully deal with such outage scenarios, this thesis outlines an architecture of a skeletal network of existing radio-navigation aids, the Distance Measuring Equipment (DME), that should be left in place to provide a redundant navigation capability alongside GPS/WAAS during this transition period. When the information from the proposed skeletal network of DME is fused with a low cost dead-reckoning system in terminal areas, performance comparable to VOR and LORAN based navigation can be achieved. This navigation scheme allows reduction of the number of operational radio-navigation aids required while still providing adequate coverage for navigation during the transition to a primary-means GPS National Airspace System. The dead-reckoning navigation system is based on the fusion of a single low-end DME receiver with low cost inertial, air-data and magnetic sensors. These sensors are already part of the newer general aviation aircraft’s suite of navigation sensors.