Smart Aviation Headset Position Encoding for Landing Guidance
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current aircraft landing assistance systems, such as ILS and PAR, have limitations in accessibility and cost, and require either onboard equipment for ILS or costly installations for PAR, making them unavailable at all landing sites.
Innovation Solution
A smart aviation headset system that includes a position module with sensors and antennas to determine aircraft position independently, encoding this information as an audible tone signal outside the voice communication range, allowing for transmission over standard radio channels and decoding at a ground station for guidance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If ILS equipment is provided onboard the aircraft, then lateral and vertical guidance can be communicated to the aircraft, but the system becomes costly and requires maintenance and calibration
Solution Approach 1:
The aircraft determines its own position using onboard sensors and antennas without requiring external guidance equipment, eliminating the need for costly ILS onboard equipment while maintaining reliable landing guidance capability
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical/electronic ILS equipment with a software-based position determination system using sensors and antennas already present on modern aircraft, converting a hardware-dependent system into a computational solution
2Reliability
If PAR radar is installed at landing sites, then lateral and vertical guidance can be provided, but the system becomes costly to install and maintain
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the aircraft itself universal by enabling it to determine its own position using existing sensors and antennas, allowing the same aircraft to operate at any landing site without requiring site-specific PAR radar installations
Solution Approach 2:
Instead of having the ground provide guidance information to the aircraft (traditional PAR approach), the patent inverts the system so that the aircraft determines its own position and communicates it to the ground, reversing the information flow direction
3Adaptability or versatility
If position information is transmitted over standard radio voice channels, then no additional communication equipment is needed, but the position data may interfere with voice communications
Solution Approach 1:
The patent separates position information and voice communications into different frequency dimensions, allowing both to coexist on the same radio channel without interference by assigning position data to frequencies outside the voice communication range
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces an encoder module as an intermediary that converts position information into a frequency-coded format suitable for transmission over voice channels, and a decoder module at the ground station that extracts the position data from the encoded signal
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for providing landing guidance to an aircraft may include an aviation headset having one or more sensors and one or more antennas, a position module configured to determine a position of the headset, and an encoder module for encoding the position information as an audible subchannel. The encoded audible subchannel may be included with voice transmissions via the aircraft radio. A guidance portion may receive the transmission and analyze the encoded audible subchannel to determine the position of the aircraft. Landing guidance may be communicated based on a comparison of the position with a desired glide path.