Navigation with the broadband MIMO-NCI-OFDM air-to-ground communications network

With the increasing of the traffic of the civil aircrafts, the broadband aeronautical communications are required. Different from the narrow-band system, the broadband system for Air-to-Ground (A/G) communications bases on the broadband non-continuous spectrum located in VHF and L band, which are traditionally occupied by radar systems, such as Distant Measurement Equipment (DME) etc. Therefore, it is naturally to try to manage the broadband A/G communications link with the capability for navigation, which can gradually replace the DME and cover its function. In this paper, with the broadband A/G link in spectrum holes, namely Multi-Input and Multi-Output Non-Continuous Interferometry Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (MIMO-NCI-OFDM) system, the efficient navigation scheme is proposed with TDOA algorithms. Moreover, the specific Kalman filtering algorithm is employed for improving the accuracy. The simulation for the performance on Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) confirm the validity and efficiency of the proposed scheme.