The government of India has warned domestic airlines of “consequences” if they do not use GAGAN, the state’s GPS-Aided Geo Augmented Navigation system, reports the Mumbai Mirror.
The warning came during a meeting called by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in December with all stakeholders, including the airlines. Most aircraft registered in India are still not equipped with the technology two years after its launch.
While smaller aircraft such as ATRs and Bombardiers in the Indian carriers’ fleet are already equipped with the GAGAN system, bigger planes need to be retrofitted at the airlines’ expense, including Airbus A320, A330, Boeing 737, B777 and B 787. Eight major domestic carriers — Air India, Air India Express, Jet Airways, JetLite, IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir, Vistara and AirAsia — have 427 such planes in service, Mumbai Mirror reports.
The National Civil Aviation Policy, announced by the government in June, makes it mandatory for all aircraft registered in India to be GAGAN-enabled by Jan. 1, 2019.
Jointly developed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI), the GAGAN system was officially launched by Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju in July 2016. It is said to make airline operations more efficient and cut down costs as it reduces separation between aircraft, increases air safety and fuel efficiency.
GAGAN’s footprint extends from Africa to Australia and has expansion capability for seamless navigation services across the region. The system is inter-operable with other international satellite based tracking systems such as the WAAS (US), EGNOS (Europe) and MSAD (Japan).
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is offering a $500 rebate for aircraft to install Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast (ADS-B) surveillance technology ahead of a 2020 deadline.
Today on a national press call, U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Deputy Administrator Michael G. Whitaker announced the $500 rebate incentive for General Aviation (GA) aircraft owners who equip their aircraft with required avionics technology.
Accelerating compliance is critical to ensuring that pilots, manufacturers and retail facilities have adequate time and capacity to equip aircraft ahead of a 2020 regulatory deadline, the FAA said.
ADS-B is a foundational element of the FAA’s NextGen program, which consists of a suite of technologies that are modernizing the nation’s air traffic control system. ADS-B transforms aircraft surveillance using satellite-based positioning.
“This announcement signals our commitment to NextGen, which has played an important role in ensuring that our airspace is safe and efficient for the American people,” Secretary Foxx said. “We are focused on achieving its full potential, and by working with our General Aviation community, I’m confident we can successfully integrate aircraft and technology into the national airspace system.”
The rebates will be available this fall, and the FAA will announce the specific date soon.
In the meantime, the FAA has published information regarding the goals and structure of the program and is encouraging aircraft owners to look at the available equipment on the market and to schedule an installation appointment with a qualified installer starting in the fall of 2016. Aircraft owners will only qualify for the rebate if the installation is scheduled after the FAA begins offering the rebates.
The FAA published a final rule in May 2010 mandating that aircraft flying in certain controlled airspace be equipped with ADS-B by Jan. 1, 2020. That airspace is generally the same busy airspace where transponders are required. Aircraft that fly only in uncontrolled airspace where no transponders are required, and aircraft without electrical systems, such as balloons and gliders, are exempt from the mandate.
“We’re calling on all aircraft owners who plan to fly in busy airspace to equip with ADS-B before the deadline,” Administrator Huerta said. “Owners who wait too long to equip may not be able to get an installation appointment before the deadline. This limited-time rebate provides an incentive for early retrofitting, and will help draw attention for the urgent need for owners to comply so that they can continue to fly their aircraft in 2020.”
The $500 rebate will help offset an owner’s cost to equip U.S.-registered, fixed-wing, single-engine piston aircraft with avionics that comply with FAA technical standard orders and meet the rule requirements. The FAA is not offering rebates for software upgrades for aircraft already equipped, for new aircraft or for aircraft for which the FAA already has paid or committed to upgrade.
The FAA will be able to distribute 20,000 rebates — one rebate per aircraft owner. The FAA is encouraging owners of fixed-wing, single-engine piston aircraft to apply as soon as the program is launched this fall because the rebates are available on a first-come, first-served basis for one year, or until all 20,000 rebates are claimed, whichever comes first. The FAA estimates that as many as 160,000 aircraft need to be equipped by the deadline.
“ADS-B provides the General Aviation community with increased safety, efficiency, and situational awareness,” said Whitaker. “We’re getting closer to the 2020 deadline, and we need 100 percent equipage in the required airspace to realize the full benefits of this NextGen technology.”
General aviation and air taxi aircraft equipped with ADS-B Out enjoy more efficient spacing and optimal routing in some non-radar environments, including busy airspace in the Gulf of Mexico, mountainous regions of Colorado, and some areas in Alaska. ADS-B improves life-saving search-and-rescue with accurate and timely last-reported positions. General aviation pilots may also benefit from air traffic control services outside radar coverage.
The FAA is continuing to work with stakeholders such as the Aircraft Electronics Association, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, and others to inform and educate the aviation community about the ADS-B requirements.
Aircraft are required to be equipped with ADS-B by January 2020 as part of the agency’s effort to implement the satellite-based NextGen system to improve the nation’s air traffic control.
ADS-B technology, which costs around $2,000 to install, can save lives because it improves situational awareness, allows real time weather and traffic updates and improves communication where radar is limited. It also has the ability to improve route efficiency and air traffic.
CMD Flight Solutions has received U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval on its third Collins TDR-94/94D Transponder and GPS pairing, the FreeFlight Systems WAAS 1203C.
CMD Flight Solutions develops, markets and provides FAA-certified modifications to support NextGen avionics mandates and assists service and installation facilities with modification solutions to satisfy FAA-mandated requirements. The company provides Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) Out on more than 5,000 business and personal aircraft.
The supplemental type certificate (AML STC) of its ADS-B OUT solution for Part 25 airplanes covers installation of FreeFlight’s 1203C SBAS/GNSS GPS position sensor with Rockwell Collins TDR-94/94D transponders. According to FreeFlight, “The pairing is a cost-effective way to help aircraft owners meet the ADS-B mandate.”
ADS-B OUT compliance is due Jan. 1, 2020, in the United States.The 1203C, a 15-channel GPS sensor, is also an approved position source for NextGen applications such as CPDLC, TAWS/FMS, RNP and others.
Last year, in a massive crowdsourcing effort, eight million volunteers from around the world sat at their computers and searched high-resolution satellite imagery looking for signs of Malaysia flight 370, which had left Kuala Lumpur and never arrived in Beijing. The effort was akin to putting thousands of digital helicopters into the sky above 340,000 square kilometers of ocean. The project, organized by DigitalGlobe’s Tomnod group, didn’t find evidence of the plane. More than a year later and with wreckage recently discovered, it’s a good time to do a post-mortem of the crowdsourcing effort that involved amateur GPS citizen scientists from around the world.
Tomnod provided volunteers with images of the Thailand Gulf, Andaman Sea and areas of the Indian Ocean (West of Australia), an area that had been recommended for scrutiny by AMSA, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. The area was organized by map tiles, each one-eighth of a kilometer. The images provided to the volunteers were still photos, a snapshot in time. The search followed the core rule of crowd sourcing — redundancy, and all map tiles were reviewed by multitudes of people.
The Tomnod crowdsourcing website from 2014.
I signed up to search images, and like others, was instructed to individually tag signs of wreckage, rafts, oil spills and interesting objects. Volunteers submitted 18 million tags for further review. Some of the tags were then inspected by analysts at Tomnod, but the vast majority were analyzed by computer programs alone. Search and rescue organizations were given the results to aid their search efforts.
With advancements in object recognition, one would think it possible for the initial search to be done by computer vision algorithms. Crowdsourcing could be used to manually clarify or further refine classifications. Tomnod believes identifying objects in the ocean is difficult and best done by humans, but has used digital object recognition in a new project. “For our project of mapping Swaziland to help eliminate malaria, Tomnod uses object recognition algorithms to locate buildings,” says Caitlyn Milton of DigitalGlobe. “Our next step is having crowdsource volunteers manually draw building footprints for each individual building. We either use volunteers or deploy our algorithm to identify the roof types (metal, wood or thatch), which are correlated with Malaria rates.”
Debris from flight MH370 washed up on Réunion Island in July.
Tomnod would have needed a trifecta: the correct geographic area, visible debris and identification of the debris to yield the actual crash site. Unfortunately, even with the discovery of plane parts found last month near Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean and even with analysis of ocean currents and weather conditions, it will be difficult to ascertain if the plane crashed within the Tomnod search area.
Crowdsourcing is not new to mapping. European countries offered hefty pouches of gold in the 1500s to people who could help solve the puzzle of determining latitude for maritime navigation. The competitors were well educated — mathematicians, astronomers and watchmakers. To contribute today, all one needs is a computer, a wireless connection and free time.
Next month, I’ll be in Las Vegas at CTIA’s Super Mobility 2015 reporting on industry developments. If you have interesting news, contact me.
Satellites, aircraft and unmanned aerial systems (UAS) collect imagery that can be displayed and analyzed within a geographic information system (GIS) to extract important information.
To familiarize GIS professionals and students with the advanced earth imaging technologies available today, Esri has publishedEssential Earth Imaging for GIS. The book is a field guide to Earth imaging, providing guidance to efficiently and effectively display, manipulate, enhance, and interpret features from an image.Essential Earth Imaging for GISprovides a basic education in remote-sensing technology, promoting the effective use of sophisticated multispectral and 3D imagery.
Chapters introduce readers to remote-sensing methods and types of imagery as well as how to display and enhance multispectral images, process images in a GIS to improve quality, generate three-dimensional data, and visually interpret images in a GIS to extract information from them.
The book provides hands-on experience working with imagery in Esri’sArcGIS for DesktopandArcGIS Online. Exercises include assigning colors in multiband images and extracting information from multispectral images by digitalizing features. Companion exercises and a free 180-day trial of ArcGIS are available by accessing theEsri Press Book Resources website.
Essential Earth Imaging for GISwas written by Lawrence Fox III, emeritus professor of forest remote sensing and GIS at Humboldt State University in California. The book serves as a starting point for GIS professionals who want to learn the basics of imaging technology so they can incorporate it more effectively into their work, while students can use this book as a reference for introductory GIS courses that make use of image display and analysis.
Essential Earth Imaging for GISis available in print (ISBN: 9781589483453, 128 pages, US$59.99) or as an e-book (ISBN: 9781589484313, 128 pages, US$59.99). The book is available at online retailers worldwide, atesri.com/esripress, or by calling 1-800-447-9778. Outside the United States, visitesri.com/esripressordersfor complete ordering options, or visitesri.com/distributorsto contact your local Esri distributor. Interested retailers can contact Esri Press book distributor Ingram Publisher Services.
Esri Press publishes books on GIS, cartography, and related topics. The complete selection of GIS titles from Esri Press can be found on the web atesri.com/esripress.
McMurdo Group, maker of end-to-end search and rescue solutions, has received formal certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for its Kannad Integra ARINC 429 Navigation Interface.
Based on the ARINC 429 GPS communications standard for most commercial aircraft, the interface, when used with the Kannad Integra Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT), provides dual GPS redundancy that can result in aircraft being found much faster compared to standard ELTs in event of an emergency. The solution has already been selected by aircraft manufacturers including Pilatus, Embraer and Airbus Helicopters.
Traditional ELTs rely on an aircraft’s external antenna and GPS equipment, which is subject to failure in the event of an emergency. The Kannad Integra ELT, however, can operate independently of the aircraft to provide key positioning data through its built-in internal antenna and embedded GPS receiver. The Integra ARINC 429 navigation interface stores the latest known position of the aircraft based on the aircraft navigation system data. This data is then used by the built-in Integra GPS for better location accuracy and a higher chance of rescue.
The Kannad Integra ELT and Integra ARINC 429 Navigation Interface are suitable for commercial aircraft, helicopters, business jets and airlines. Once activated, the Integra ELT transmits a distress signal to alert international rescue services to the emergency location via the global Cospas-Sarsat Search and Rescue satellite system, which has helped to save more than 37,000 lives since 1982.
“McMurdo’s Kannad products have been chosen by the world’s leading aircraft manufacturers and airlines for their quality, reliability and innovation,” said Christian Belleux, head of McMurdo’s Kannad Aviation Business Unit. “This new ARINC 429 interface is yet another example of how we are helping to shape the present and the future of aviation safety.”
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is asking for input on how to launch and recover multiple small unmanned air systems (UAS) from existing large aircraft, such as the C-130. It has issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking technical, security and business insights on “aircraft carriers in the sky.”
In DARPA’s “blended approach,” a large aircraft would host a small UAS and facilitate its operations. The agency says it would be more cost-effective for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (ISR) and other missions.
Safety is another key aspect of the project. While small UAS can reduce putting an aircraft or pilot at risk, DARPA says it may lack the speed, range and endurance of larger aircraft.
“We want to find ways to make smaller aircraft more effective, and one promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become ‘aircraft carriers in the sky,’” said Dan Patt, DARPA program manager. “We envision innovative launch and recovery concepts for new UAS designs that would couple with recent advances in small payload design and collaborative technologies.”
The RFI is calling for short responses — no more than eight pages — that must address the following three areas:
System-level technologies and concepts that would enable low-cost reusable small UAS platforms and airborne launch and recovery systems that would require minimal modification of existing large aircraft types. This area includes modeling and simulation as well as feasibility analysis, including substantiating preliminary data if available.
Potentially high-payoff operational concepts and mission applications for distributed airborne capabilities and architectures, as well as relative capability and affordability compared to conventional approaches (e.g., monolithic aircraft and payloads or missile-based approaches). DARPA hopes to leverage significant investments in the area of precision relative navigation, which seeks to enable extremely coordinated flight activities among aircraft, as well as recent and ongoing development of small payloads (100 pounds or less).
Proposed plans for achieving full-system flight demonstrations within four years, to assist in planning for a potential future DARPA program. DARPA is interested not only in what system functionality such plans could reasonably achieve within that timeframe, but also how to best demonstrate this functionality to potential users and transition partners. These notional plans should include rough order-of-magnitude (ROM) cost and schedule information, as well as interim risk reduction and demonstration events to evaluate program progress and validate system feasibility and interim capabilities.
According to a news release by DARPA, technology development beyond the three areas will be considered if it supports the RFI’s goals.
Proposals are due by 4 p.m. ET on Nov. 26, 2014, to [email protected].
EGNOS is Europe’s first venture into satellite navigation. EGNOS broadcasts augmented information through a trio of geostationary satellites linked to a network of monitoring ground stations, to sharpen the accuracy and reliability of GPS signals across the continent. Photo: EGNOS
Europe’s EGNOS augmentation system sharpens the accuracy and reliability of GPS signals so they can safely be used for landing approaches across a growing number of European airports. But aviation is a global enterprise — so the aim is to develop a seamless network of augmentation systems in future.
That is the task of an international group of experts, the Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) Interoperability Working Group (IWG), whose 27th meeting took place in Tampa, Florida, September 8-10, hosted by the Institute of Navigation.
Satellite augmentation systems combine dedicated ground stations and satellite transponders to sharpen satnav accuracy and provide integrity data — providing continuously updated reliability levels — across given geographical regions. These systems are based on GPS for now, but plans are to move to a multi-constellation design in the post-2020 era, making use of Europe’s Galileo, China’s Beidou and Russia’s GLONASS systems as well.
SBAS providers from around the globe gathered at Tampa, Florida, for the latest meeting of the SBAS Interoperability Working Group September 8-10. IWG 27 was hosted by the Institute of Navigation. Photo: SBAS
SBAS systems enhance any type of location-based satnav use, but in practice, aviation is the main driver. The ESA-developed European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, EGNOS, commenced its general-public Open Service in 2009, with the Safety-of-Life Service for aircraft vertical landing approaches following in 2011.
For next-generation SBAS systems, the IWG is designing a multi-constellation and dual-frequency standard for heightened accuracy and reliability, building up to offering SBAS coverage on a worldwide basis.
Didier Flament, representing ESA — which co-chaired this IWG meeting with the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority — commented: “Among the achievements of the Tampa IWG has been the presentation of an ongoing review of a standard message definition for the new and second SBAS channel — known as L5 — of the second-generation SBAS system, to be used along with the current L1 signal.
ASECNA Member States.
“A single definition coordinated between ESA and the European Commission on one side and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on the other is progressing. The formal IWG review loop has started, with the aim of finalizing the convergence for early 2015. The aim is to have it ready to submit to the international SBAS standardization bodies — the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the U.S. Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics and the European Organization for Civil Aviation Equipment — in the first quarter of next year.”
The meeting also introduced two new SBAS development projects, adding to the five existing projects presented at IWG 26. The first was presented by the Agency for Air Navigation Safety in western Africa and Madagascar (ASECNA), a public international organization with 18 member states.
China’s BeiDou SBAS development plan, presented at IWG 27 in September 2014.
ASECNA’s project aims to take a two-step approach, commencing with EGNOS-style vertical landing guidance for selected airports, based on EGNOS constituents, with a tentative schedule of 2018, moving to upgrade to the dual-frequency multi-constellation service across the whole of ASECNA airspace after 2020.
The second new project is China’s own BeiDou SBAS. After discussions at ICAO level, China has committed to delivering SBAS services over China that are fully compliant with ICAO standards.
“This new plan has been highly welcomed by the aviation community and other SBAS providers,” Didier said. “Chinese representatives have also confirmed their intention to become part of the SBAS IWG and contribute to the work done to finalise the future standard.”
The follow-up IWG meeting will take place in February 2015 and will be hosted by ASECNA in Dakar, Senegal.
About EGNOS
EGNOS, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service, is Europe’s first venture into satellite navigation. Its development was managed by the European Space Agency (ESA) under a tripartite agreement with the European Commission (EC) and the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol).
The ownership of the EGNOS assets was transferred from ESA to the EC in April 2009 and EGNOS officially entered service on October 1, 2009. The service is delivered, through a contract with the European GNSS Service Agency (GSA), by the European Satellite Services Provider, ESSP SaS, founded by seven air navigation service providers. ESA is the design and procurement agent for EGNOS on behalf of the EC.
Airbus Defence and Space has mobilized five observation satellites to aid in the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines plane. The Boeing 777 disappeared on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
The day after the aircraft disappeared,the very high-resolution Pléaides 1A and 1B satellites, the high-resolution SPOT 5 and 6 satellites, and the synthetic aperture radar satellites TerraSAR-X were programmed to take images of the search zone. All the data collected are analyzed by Airbus Defence and Space maritime experts and provided to the Malaysian Remote Sensing Agency (MRSA).
The Pléiades images are also transferred via CNES, and TerraSAR-X images via DLR, to the Chinese Meteorological Administration, which requested the Disaster Charter activation on March 11.
Since Sunday, March 9, the experts of Airbus Defence and Space have been analyzing the images taken by the optical and radar satellites. The radar satellites like TerraSAR-X are able to identify layers of hydrocarbon as well as any oil slick or metallic objects floating on the sea. The resolution of the optical satellites Pléiades 1A & 1B (50 cm after resampling) and SPOT 5 and 6 allow for identification and characterization of small objects over large surfaces.
