Development of a Mobile Aircraft Tracking System

• Published in: Electronic Navigation Research Institute papers Vol. 1985; no. 51; pp. 35 - 53
• Main Authors: TANAKA, Shuichi, NIHEI, Shiro, YAMAMOTO, Kazuo, ISHIBASHI, Torao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: Electronic Navigation Research Institute 10.12.1985
• ISSN: 1341-9102; 2758-2973
• DOI: 10.57358/enrihoukoku.1985.51_35

A mobile aircraft tracking system for flight tests on various electronic navigation systems has developed and described in this paper. The tracking system consists of a position angle measuring subsystem, a distance measuring subsystem, a data telemetry subsystem and a data processor.The azimuth and elevation angles of an aircraft are measured with an automatic television tracker. The distance from a ground tracking point to an aircraft is measured by integrating the doppler shift in the received signal from the aircraft. Various data acquired on the aircraft are transmitted to the ground by the telemetry system, and the data processor computes the navigation error of the electronic navigation system by comparing with the aircraft position data.The performance of each subsystem composing the system was examined, then it was introduced to the flight test of MLS. The test showed the system error of 0.01 degree or less in position angles and about 6 meters in distance.These results verify that the system is useful for the precise measurement of an aircraft position. And this system with an automatic data processing has proved to make a flight test much more efficient than the case with a conventional aircraft positioning.