Recovery of airplane trajectory data by orientation angles and velocity information

A global air transportation system widely uses automatic position reporting equipment. Data transferred by wireless data channel in Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system include coded values of latitude, longitude, altitude, velocity, and heading angle. These messages are received by a network of ADS-B receivers, decoded, and stored by each airspace user separately. Performance of data transferring depends on number of users of wireless channel. Interference acting in data channel of 1090 MHz damages transferred messages, which leads to data loss. Data from one user in ADS-B are transferred in different message types within one cycle of data transmission. In the paper, we consider recovery of airplane trajectory data by available data of heading angle and ground velocity. Analytical equations for calculation of latitude and longitude by available heading angle and ground velocity have been proposed. Also, analytical functions for estimation accuracy of recovered coordinates have been derived. Analytical functions have been represented in the form of transformation matrix which connects input parameters with performance of positioning. Results of the study indicate that positioning performance depends on vehicle velocity and time between data updating in the ADS-B system. Positioning performance for velocity 200m/s degrades double time for increasing time between iterations in 13 s. Proposed approach could be useful for ground and on-board implementations for both real-time and post-processing.