Method and system for determining the position of an aircraft during its approach to a landing runway

Abstract

A method for guiding an aircraft during its final approach to a landing runway, whereby the aircraft is guided during its approach by aircraft position information obtained from an GNSS satellite navigation system, wherein: prior to the start of the final approach a first time tFAF is determined corresponding with the start of said final approach and a second time tTD corresponding with the landing of the aircraft on said runway, then a set of satellites is determined of the satellite navigation system for excluding from the calculation of said aircraft position information during at least a part of the time interval comprised between said first and second times; and during the final approach, the aircraft position information is determined while excluding the information corresponding with all the satellites of said set of satellites and the aircraft is guided along its final approach path by said position information. The invention further provides a control system for implementing the method.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to the field of aircraft navigation, and more particularly, the present invention relates to satellite navigation GNSS ("Global Navigation Satellite System" in English "Global Navigation Satellite System") based on, for example, GPS during the final approach portion of a precision approach in automatic mode Determining the calculated position of the aircraft can even involve automatic landing, also known in English terminology as "autoland". More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and a device for determining information on the position of an aircraft on said final approach, thereby allowing the provision of deviation information in the horizontal and vertical directions to automatic controllers, and in particular making the navigation rules for precise approaches not subject to jumps. changes (jumps may affect automatic approach and landing performance). Background technique [0002] In civil aviatio...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Adding or removing one or more satellites to the calculation of the aircraft's position during approach may cause the position to jump by a few meters

This permissible jump in position within an approach range limited to a decision altitude, say 200 feet (about 60 meters), may be significant for a precision approach with a small decision altitude, especially in the case of an automatic landing unacceptable

In fact, given the increased navigational performance required for automatic landings, the position of the aircraft must be identified with a very high degree of accuracy (of the order of a few meters), and position jumps can be seen as large deviations, which in a certain not allowed in some cases

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