In-Flight Testing of Airborne LIDAR for Wake Vortex Detection, Characterization and Tracking

摘要

Today wake vortex dependent spacing between aircraft is achieved by static distances for arrival but also for en-route. With the upcoming operational novelties foreseen in NextGen and SESAR like in-trail procedures and aircraft self-separation, aircraft wake vortex encounter mitigation comes into focus especially for the en-route flight phase. For the localization of aircraft wake vortices generated by surrounding aircraft, two possibilities exist in general: determining the position, movement and strength by means of wake vortex model prediction and the detection by dedicated airborne sensors. While prediction is prone to uncertainties in model input quantities, airborne detection sensors like LIDAR are prone to a large scanning domain, adverse scanning geometry and challenging signal processing. To overcome the drawbacks of both model prediction and sensor detection, the Institute of Flight Guidance of the Technische Universitaet Braunschweig is planning to conduct flight trials with an airborne LIDAR equipment for wake vortex detection and tracking utilizing special prediction-detection fusion approaches. This paper describes the airborne LIDAR installation, the system layout and the connection to the aircraft avionics for the steering of the LIDAR scanning.