ADS-B in a radar

environment

Greg Dunstone
Surveillance Program Lead,
Airservices Australia
Why ADS-B in a radar
environment?

 Reduced radar investment

 Radar + ADS-B instead of
Two radars
 Reduced maintenance
 Australia expects to
decommission 4 radars in
2017 (ADS-B instead)

 ADS-B IN
 Situational awareness
 Update rate
 Accuracy

 Airport & Surface

 A-SMGCS
 PRM
Surveillance performance
benefits of ADS-B
 Better Coverage
 Fill coverage holes at low cost
 Extend beyond limits of radar PRF
 Access to sites unavailable to radar
 Often better detection than radar

 Higher Update rate

 ½ second update possible
 Detection of manoeuvres
• Eg Turn onto final
 STCA performance
 PRM function?

 Better Accuracy
 Higher accuracy
 Accuracy independent of range

 Better Velocity vector

 Determined in aircraft (instead of noisy
radar positions)
 Lower latency, higher accuracy
 Better safety net performance
 Heading noise
ADS_B RADAR
ADS-B System Track Heading - Variation from Mean
Radar System Track Heading Variation from Mean

3 3

2 2

1 1

0 0
0 50 100 150 200
0 50 100 150 200
-1 -1
Degrees

Degrees
-2 -2

-3 -3

-4 -4

-5 -5

-6 -6

-7 -7

ADS-B System Track Update Number Radar System Track Update Number
ATM Integration with radar
 “As a radar”
 Asterix Cat 48
 Acceptable, Not desirable
o Does not maximise performance

 ADS-B processing
 Tracking with 24 bit code
 Identity (Flight ID, 24 bit code, ModeA
if available)

 Radar alignment
o NO ADS-B alignment
o Radar alignment is critical (as it is for
radar-radar alignment)
 Fusion with radar
o Mosaic system / Priority system
o Treat as a radar
o Kalman filter integration (Best)

 Taking care of quality factors

 NIC,NAC,NUC,SIL etc

 Taking care of failure modes

 GPS dependence
 Changeover transponder procedures
 Get flight ID right “on ground”
ICAO Circular 326 : Terminal area
Minimum Requirements for 3 NM Separation Service
(Accuracy < 0.3 Nm) (Integrity as below)

}
Position: Integrity
A containment radius of <1 NM
and the likelihood of the position The requirement is met by
error exceeding containment radius HPL < 1 nautical mile
of 1e – 5 & accuracy < 0.3 Nm

This can be represented by either:

Circular 326
a) Navigation Integrity Category >= 5 and Representation for DO260 and
Surveillance Integrity Limit = 2 (or better) DO260A/B
& Navigation Accuracy Category >= 6

Or (NUC=5 requires HPL<0.5 Nm

And very conservatively implies
b) Navigation Uncertainty Category >= 5 accuracy < 0.3 NM )
or better;
Australian position
Minimum Requirement 3 NM
This can be represented by either:
}
a) Navigation Integrity Category >= 5
and
Surveillance Integrity Limit = 2
& Navigation Accuracy Category >= 6
Or
b) Navigation Uncertainty Category = 4
or better;
Requires HPL<1 NM
As per Circular 326
Australia uses Circular 326 note
and Safety case to argue that
NUC=4 is acceptable for DO260.
(NUC=4 requires HPL<1 NM and
means accuracy < 0.3 NM)
Note.– For the provision of separation services to
aircraft equipped with DO260 avionics, a State may
select lower encoded values for NUC in relation to
accuracy and integrity when it is demonstrated by safety
assessment that the 95 percentile accuracy, and
containment radius values, identified in Table C-1 will
continue to be met.
CASA accepts that

 If DO260 NUC <=4 (HPL< 1 Nm)

implies that

Accuracy (95%) < 0.3 mile

 Safety case considered the following

issues :
• Range of Applicability of performance comparison
with radar
• Airservices Australia captured empirical data
• Analysis of rare cases, when there are less than 5
satellites in view
• The reference radar which allows inaccurate
outlier samples 5% of the time with errors up to 5
times the core accuracy (95%) value
• Availability of GNSS Performance to Support ADS-
B” by Matt Harris, Tim Murphy from Boeing
Commercial Airplanes presented at the 21st
International Technical Meeting of the Satellite
Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS
2008) .
Why this is important ?
 More stringent integrity requirement 
More ADS-B outages
 NUC=5 outages do occur

 If the required quality factors are too Transitions

stringent to Inadequate
NUC/NIC
 When GPS geometry is poor
• Integrity value will drop
• Low integrity ADS-B data will be discarded
by the system
o Loss of ADS-B service

 When GPS receiver has poor reception

• Integrity value will drop
• Low integrity ADS-B data will be discarded
by the system
o Loss of ADS-B service 0.5 NM 1NM 2NM
(NUC5) (NUC4) (NUC3)
 Safety is compromised
HPL Requirement
 IF the required quality factors are too lax

 Safety is compromised
Australian position
Minimum Requirement Enroute 5 NM separation

This can be represented by either:

}
Requires HPL<2 Nm
a) Navigation Integrity Category = 4 (or
As per Circular 326
better) and
Surveillance Integrity Limit = 2 (or better)

Or

b) Navigation Uncertainty Category = 3 Whilst the case of NUC=3 has

or better; been accepted for Enroute,

Australia uses NUC=4 because

we do not see outages at NUC=4
Conclusion
ADS-B is as good or better than a Terminal area radar

ADS-B can be used alone or together with radars in enroute or TMA to

• Improve surveillance performance

• Reduce cost
• Support ADS-B IN applications

ANSPs and regulators need to determine the appropriate and required

ADS-B quality factors
 Questions?

Greg Dunstone +61 (02) 6268 4286

greg.dunstone@airservicesaustralia.com