Robust tracking architecture for Mode-S Enhanced Surveillance

The evolution of airborne communication systems and ground stations make it possible to improve the performance of tracking systems, in order to increase capacity, safety and efficiency of air traffic environments. These new systems enable downlinking several aircraft parameters for use in ground air traffic management (ATM) systems. Some of these parameters can be used for ATM system function enhancements, such as aircraft tracking. Thus, in this paper, a robust architecture is proposed using downlink airborne parameters (DAPs). This architecture consists of two filters in parallel: one is in charge of dealing with DAPs and the other one cope with the absence of them. Results showing the improvements in performance of the whole system are presented, as well as results coming from the DAP based filter alone. Both results will be compared with the ones delivered by the conventional filter