Safety analysis of TCAS on Global Hawk using airspace encounter models

The U.S. Air Force's RQ-4 Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a high altitude, long endurance aircraft used for surveillance and reconnaissance. Because of the potential for close proximity to manned aircraft in civil airspace, collision avoidance is a major concern, and the Air Force is seeking to equip Global Hawk with the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) to reduce the probability of mid-air collision. Currently, Global Hawk is equipped with a Mode S transponder and uses chase aircraft, ground observers and/or ground radar contact to comply with the collision avoidance requirement. In order to evaluate TCAS effectiveness, a fast-time simulation tool has been developed at MIT Lincoln Laboratory that computes the mean probability of a near mid-air collision for a large number of close encounters between two aircraft. Airspace encounter models enable sets of encounters to be simulated that are statistically representative of the aircraft encounters that actually occur in the airspace. The TCAS logic is implemented in the simulation tool and the aircraft responses during the encounters, with and without TCAS, are simulated in parallel.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Billingsley, Thomas B. (Thomas Boyd)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• James K. Kuchar and Jonathan P. How.

• Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35294

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/35294