Targeted Ephemeris Decorrelation Parameter Inflation for Improved LAAS Availability During Severe Ionosphere Anomalies

Abstract

The Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) is a ground-based differential GNSS system designed to provide precision approach for aircraft landing at a LAASequipped airport. While most anomalies affecting the system can be mitigated in the range domain, positiondomain geometry screening is essential to mitigate threats from anomalous ionosphere spatial gradients. These can potentially cause large range-domain errors before detection by the LAAS Ground Facility (LGF). Existing algorithms for position-domain screening inflate the sigma values (óvig and ópr_gnd) broadcast by the LAAS Ground Facility (LGF). This ensures that subset satellite geometries (i.e. subsets of a set of approved GPS satellites for which the LGF broadcasts valid corrections) for which unacceptable errors can result are made unavailable to the user. These unsafe subsets are found by comparing the resulting Maximum Ionosphere-Induced Error in Vertical (MIEV) with maximum “safe” navigation system error (NSE) values derived from Obstacle Clearance Surface (OCS) applicable to CAT I precision approaches. Recent analyses of past ionosphere spatial gradients observed over the Conterminous United States (CONUS) resulted in very high maximum gradients for both low and high-elevation satellites. The new ionosphere anomaly “threat model” for LAAS CAT I specifies a maximum spatial gradient of 375 mm/km for low-elevation satellites (below 15o) while high-elevation (above 65o) satellites can experience gradients as high as 425 mm/km. Uniform inflation of the broadcast sigmas for all approved satellites results in a significant drop in system availability under the new threat model. To minimize this decline, this paper proposes a new algorithm to implement position-domain screening by inflating satellite-specific, targeted ephemeris decorrelation parameters (called “P-values”) and ópr_gnd values. Availability is assessed for ten major airports in the USA. Under normal conditions, 100% availability is achieved for eight airports, while availability for the two remaining airports exceeds 99%. Targeted inflation consistently results in better system availability compared to strategies that inflate all satellites by the same amount, such as the óvig approach.