Reflected Satellite Signals Offer a New Route to Aircraft Height Above Ground
· newswise.com · popularity 19/100 · 0 similar stories today · Space Industry & Commercial Spaceflight (Space & Astronomy)
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Summary
Aircraft need reliable altitude above ground level (AGL) for safe flight, but conventional systems can be constrained by active transmission, weather, coverage and single-point geometry. This field study tests whether reflected Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals can provide a complementary AGL measurement. Using upward- and downward-looking antennas and raw intermediate-frequency data, the team processed multi-constellation signals with a software-defined receiver. They propose a Short-Time Shortest-Path retracking method that uses short integrations and selects the shortest path delay when reflected waveforms show multiple peaks. The study assesses retrieval availability and accuracy over flat rural, urban/suburban, mountainous and undulating rural terrain.
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