Airborne Situational Awareness System
First Claim
1. A method for generating an airborne network for collision avoidance without ground control, wherein the airborne network includes a plurality of aircraft, the method comprising:
- establishing a data link for each aircraft to a plurality of navigational satellites for providing global positioning system (GPS) data including location, heading and speed at each time fix for each aircraft;
receiving GPS data and converting the location data into a Cartesian coordinate system data for each aircraft;
transmitting the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from a host aircraft to a plurality of target aircraft within a coverage range of the network;
receiving the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from the plurality of target aircraft;
displaying a relative position of each target aircraft to the host aircraft;
determining if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft;
providing a warning alert to the host aircraft if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft; and
automatically providing a course deviation for the host aircraft to avoid collision.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A digital airborne situational awareness system and method. The system is installed on multiple aircraft to generate an airborne network providing collision avoidance without ground control. A global positioning system (GPS) receiver unit is coupled to a microprocessor in each aircraft equipped with the system. A software engine receives the raw GPS data and determines location, speed, flight path direction, and altitude. The software engine conditions the GPS data for display on a cockpit display panel. The conditioned data orients the display with the heading, speed, and altitude data of the host system aircraft. A transceiver section provides data transmission to other airborne receiving units within the approximately forty mile range of the airborne network. The transceiver transmits data packets including reconditioned location (track), altitude, and an aircraft class identifier to other aircraft in the network. The transceiver receives data from other airborne vehicles equipped with the system within the network range. Once the computations of positional data for other aircraft are performed, the positional data is sent to the display processing section for appropriate cockpit display. The software engine develops a set of projections that are compared to the relative speed, flight path direction and altitude of the all other units in the airborne network. These projections determine the threat levels of converging flight paths with limits that provide warning data to the pilot of any pending flight path conflict situation.
126 Citations
36 Claims
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1. A method for generating an airborne network for collision avoidance without ground control, wherein the airborne network includes a plurality of aircraft, the method comprising:
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establishing a data link for each aircraft to a plurality of navigational satellites for providing global positioning system (GPS) data including location, heading and speed at each time fix for each aircraft;
receiving GPS data and converting the location data into a Cartesian coordinate system data for each aircraft;
transmitting the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from a host aircraft to a plurality of target aircraft within a coverage range of the network;
receiving the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from the plurality of target aircraft;
displaying a relative position of each target aircraft to the host aircraft;
determining if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft;
providing a warning alert to the host aircraft if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft; and
automatically providing a course deviation for the host aircraft to avoid collision. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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13. A system for generating an airborne network for collision avoidance without ground control, wherein the airborne network includes a plurality of aircraft, comprising:
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a GPS receiver for establishing a data link for each aircraft to a plurality of navigational satellites and receiving global positioning system (GPS) data including location, heading and speed at each time fix for each aircraft;
a microprocessor coupled to the GPS receiver for executing a software engine comprising a plurality of modules including a module for converting the location data into a Cartesian coordinate system data for each aircraft;
a transceiver coupled to the microprocessor for transmitting the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from a host aircraft to a plurality of target aircraft within a coverage range of the network and for receiving the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from the plurality of target aircraft;
a component for displaying a relative position of each target aircraft to the host aircraft;
a module for determining if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft;
a module for providing a warning alert to the host aircraft if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft; and
a module for automatically providing a course deviation for the host aircraft to avoid collision. - View Dependent Claims (14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27)
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25. A computer program product for generating an airborne network for collision avoidance without ground control, wherein the airborne network includes a plurality of aircraft, comprising a computer readable medium having computer readable code embedded therein, the computer readable medium comprising:
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program instructions for establishing a data link for each aircraft to a plurality of navigational satellites for providing global positioning system (GPS) data including location, heading and speed at each time fix for each aircraft;
program instructions for receiving GPS data and converting the location data into a Cartesian coordinate system data for each aircraft;
program instructions for transmitting the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from a host aircraft to a plurality of target aircraft within a coverage range of the network;
program instructions for receiving the converted location, heading, speed and time fix data from the plurality of target aircraft;
program instructions for displaying a relative position of each target aircraft to the host aircraft;
program instructions for determining if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft;
program instructions for providing a warning alert to the host aircraft if any target aircraft is on a collision course with the host aircraft; and
program instructions for automatically providing a course deviation for the host aircraft to avoid collision. - View Dependent Claims (28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36)
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Specification