STATION ARRANGEMENT EFFECTS ON GROUND-REFERENCED AIRCRAFT HEIGHT COMPUTATION BASED ON TIME DIFFERENCES OF ARRIVAL

This paper investigates aspects of the geometrical arrangement of the receivers in a ground-referenced aircraft geometric height measurement system. The system utilizes the replies transmitted by an aircraft in response to secondary surveillance radar (SSR) interrogations. The time differences of arrival (TDOAs) of the response signal at four receiving stations are measured and used to estimate the height of the aircraft. After a brief presentation of the system and the height computation algorithm, the paper focuses on the effects of the arrangement of the stations on system performance. It is shown that some arrangements result in situations under which no geometric height estimation is possible.

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