Real-time motion detection for high-assurance aircraft tracking system using Downlink Aircraft Parameters

With the rapid increase in air traffic demands, the more accurate and reliable tracking system for aircraft surveillance is required to improve the capacity, safety and efficiency of Air Traffic Control services. As a considered part of the surveillance infrastructure, the Secondary Surveillance Radar Mode S has been widely used in the aircraft tracking systems. Moreover, in the Mode S Enhanced Surveillance, the Downlink Aircraft Parameters are available for obtaining updated and detailed information from aircrafts. However, this information of aircraft parameters has not been used systematically to improve the performance of current tracking systems. In this paper, a high-assurance aircraft tracking system is proposed by applying these aircraft parameters. The system with a high-accuracy estimator and a high-reliability checker enables not only tracking aircraft with changing flight modes in real time but also identifying potential faults of these parameters by pre-to-post data verification. The results of computer simulation and practical experiment show the effectiveness of proposed system by comparing with the Interacting Multiple Model estimator.