The US Federal Aviation Administration will hold a three-day public meeting in August in Stanford, California to gather industry ideas on alternative positioning, navigation and timing (APNT) methods that could be used if global navigation satellite services are interrupted.
At present, the FAA says it uses a variety of non-GNSS equipment, including distance measuring equipment, VHF radio, instrument landing systems and radar surveillance, for APNT services.
However, the agency notes that with the coming of its space-based next generation air transport system (NextGen), legacy back-up systems will not provide the minimum level of APNT performance needed.
"Therefore the FAA is collecting information regarding research, development and potential implementation of systems, avionics, processes and procedures that minimise the impact to system capacity and efficiency during periods of GNSS interference," says the FAA.
The agency is planning to have a "limited number" of 30min closed-door sessions with manufacturers in cases where proprietary information is discussed.
An updated version of the Long Range Aids to Navigation (Loran) system had been proposed several years ago as an APNT for NextGen. At the time however, Airbus and Boeing noted that flight management and inertial measurement systems on board their modern aircraft were able to provide enough stopgap performance to land an aircraft safely in the event of a GPS outage, negating the need for an independent back-up system.
Source: Flight International
