The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 30, 2008
Filed:
Jul. 25, 2006
Alexander E. Smith, McLean, VA (US);
Eric Cassell, Burke, VA (US);
Alexander E. Smith, McLean, VA (US);
Eric Cassell, Burke, VA (US);
ERA Systems Corporation, Reston, VA (US);
Abstract
A method and system are provided for measuring and monitoring performance metrics of a non-ADS-B tracking system and generating performance metrics for the non-ADS-B tracking system in terms of ADS-B equivalent performance metrics. An aircraft transmits various transponder-based or other signals which are received at multiple ground stations, some of which may be ADS-B stations or both ADS-B and multilateration stations. ADS-B signals may contain performance metrics which are passed on from ADS-B station to an ADS-B processor, which outputs aircraft-derived metrics. ADS-B signals and all other transponder signals are also received at all ground stations, time-stamped, and sent to a multilateration processor, which generates multilateration metrics. Therefore two streams of information are passed onto ATC system processor containing the ADS-B aircraft-derived metrics and multilateration-derived metrics. The ATC system processor may then be configured to pass along both sets of messages to the ATC system, or to select a combination or fusion of the best metrics and tracking information for an aircraft.