Technical and consulting services
FCS offers as series of further services related to flight inspection. These are technical services such as electromagnetic simulations enhanced by the results of our flight inspection measurement work, and training and consulting services.
Simulations & Expert Studies
Using state-of-the-art electromagnetic solver software, FCS provides simulations of potential interference of NAV (e.g. ILS/DME) or surveillance (e.g. SSR) systems by objects such as buildings at airports or wind turbine parks. As a unique service feature FCS is capable of applying calibrated measured RF data to the simulation model and to take physical electromagnetic reflective properties of building material into account. This is measured in an absorber chamber with dedicated measurement antennas. As a result, FCS simulations are extremely reliable and also feature a documented measurement uncertainty.
In the area of simulations in Germany, FCS cooperates with Gesellschaft für Luftfahrtforschung (GfL) in Dresden.
The FCS employee Dr. J. Bredemeyer provides expert studies in his function of a publicly certified and examined expert for “Navigation- and Radar Systems in Air Traffic Control”.
Validation of NAV Databases
Commercial aviation is almost inconceivable today without GPS navigation and the ICAO Performance Based Navigation (PBN) concept. The integrity of the flight management system (FMS) database is vitally important for GPS RNAV and precision approach procedures. The same applies for approach procedures with autopilot based barometric altitude guidance (AP BaroVNAV). For this reason, all new or modified approach and departure procedure data in German airspace are coded in a special “preproduction” database produced in the regular processing chain in line with ICAO recommendations. These are subsequently flight validated and checked by means of the special FCS FIDIT Tool. FIDIT (Flight Inspection Database Integrity Tool) is based on the dbit® database tool employed by Lufthansa. FIDIT provides an automated comparison and validation of procedure data in ARINC 424 and FMS formats against applicable tolerances and reference data.
Instead of a periodic flight inspection or flight validation of GPS based procedures, FCS carries out an annual database check to confirm that the procedure coding is still identical with published data.
FCS offers to support the validation e.g. of tailored or company routes NAV databases using our dedicated toolset. We are looking forward to your inquiry.
Training
Operating a flight inspection organisation is complex. While flight inspection aircraft and flight inspection systems can be purchased on the market, the project management of these high volume investment projects is not an easy matter. To economically run a flight inspection unit in today’s regulatory framework while at the same time meeting the quality and cost criteria of clients represents an extraordinary challenge for the qualification of both staff and management.
With a cumulated company experience in flight inspection (flight inspection technology, flight operations, maintenance and organisation) of well over 500 man-years, and with the background of a highly successful flight inspection organisation, FCS is able to support other flight inspection organisations in optimising their operations, to assist with trouble-shooting and to provide training for flight inspection and maintenance staff. You can profit from a wealth of experience!
Training course topics are:
- Flight inspection basic course, for airport management personnel and airport engineers
- Flight inspection expert course
- Flight Validation
Please send us your request and we will provide you with an attractive offer tailored to your training or consultancy requirements.
SISMOS (Signal-in-Space Monitoring System)
As a consequence of shortcomings of integrating aviation-certified receivers in flight inspection systems (as per ICAO recommendation), FCS developed its SISMOS platform already early in the company history. SISMOS is purpose-designed to analyse and record raw NAV and surveillance bandpass signals and to make radio field effects transparent. This is achieved by dedicated RF front-ends, signal-specific correlation algorithms and sampling rates, and simultaneous multi-channel processing and recording.
FCS projects employing SISMOS include ILS LOC/GP, as well as DME/TACAN multipath interference investigations, determination of P-RNAV (DME/ DME) useful coverage and quality figures in support of the EUROCONTROL / P-RNAV implementation program, as well as analyses of 1030/1090 MHz SSR and WAM radio field environments.
Based on FCS receiver design experience, we provide design and engineering support to industry. References include NAV test equipment, ADS-B receivers and general aviation SSR transponder receivers. An outstanding example is the FCS-developed ADS-B-receiver installed on the ESA “PROBA-V” research satellite. This has been continuously transmitting ADS-B positions of global air traffic down to earth since 2013, featuring a coherent detection system for the weak ADS-B signals in space.
References:
- Rohde & Schwarz EVS300 und EDS300 design support
- Funke avionics TRT-800
- » Space-based ADS-B 4S Symposium DLR presentation
1030/1090 MHz Monitoring
Air Traffic Management makes extensive use of the 1030/1090 MHz RF channels for SSR, WAM, and ADS-B surveillance systems. As these are also used for TCAS anti-collision warning system, the channels require special protection, as mandated in article 6 of EASA regulation 1207/2011. Using the 1030/1090 MHz version of the established FCS SISMOS technology, FCS carries out special measurements and is capable of producing exhaustive analytic analyses of recorded radio field channel data where it really matters: in the air, identifying possible interoperability problems, equipment deficiencies and determining quality-of-service parameters. A key reference is the “MOSTDONT” SSR Mode S radar / transponder interoperability study carried out for EASA in 2010.
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Wind Turbines & Air Traffic Management
Wind turbines, a widespread source of renewable energy potentially have a detrimental impact on the performance of surveillance systems used in air traffic management (ATM), such as creation of false targets or loss of targets. Also, under certain instances, bearing errors of conventional NAV systems might also be caused by reflections from wind turbines.
To investigate the issue further, the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Protection and Nuclear Safety awarded a contract for the “WERAN” research project under the lead of the German National Institute of Metrology, PTB in October 2013. One of the project goals, apart from carrying out physical measurements using UAV measurement platforms with calibrated antennas is to provide model data to simulation experts for the improvement of simulation models. The FCS contribution to the development of the UAS is a miniaturized multi-channel version of our FPGA SISMOS recording platform and signal processing software. Further R&D partners are steep GmbH, as well as Leibniz University Hannover.
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UAS (OCtokopter)
The increasingly widespread use of UAS raises the issue of using UAS for flight inspection. While flying larger RPAS in the typical flight inspection arena at large airports hardly seems likely in the foreseeable future, smaller high performance platforms lend themselves to carry out special or complementary measurements to flight inspection. With the WERAN octocopter, FCS has taken a technical lead also in this field. First measurements were carried out early 2016 with ILS and VOR, followed by measurements for other frequency ranges and systems, e.g. MSSR. FCS is studying the regular deployment of UAS on a long term basis in cooperation with key FCS customers.
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