Enhanced vision for adverse weather aircraft landing

Landing in poor weather is a crucial problem for the air transportation system of the future. To aid the pilots for these conditions several solutions have been suggested and/or implemented including instrument landing system(ILS) and microwave landing system(MLS) that put the responsibility of the landing to a large extent in the hands of the airport facilities. These systems even though useful are not available due to their high costs except in few major metropolitan airports. This shortcoming has generated interest in providing all weather capabilities not on the landing facility but on the vehicle itself. The Synthetic Vision System Technology Demonstration sponsored by the United States Federal Aviation Administration(FAA) and the US Air Force represents an effort to respond to the above needs1,2]. In this paper we present a summary of a typical synthetic vision system. This system consists of a scanning 35GHz radar a scanning antenna, a signal/image processor and a head up display(HUD). The pilot is presented a final perspective image of the scene sensed by the radar with associated flight guidance symbology. This systems is implemented in real time hardware and has been under going tower and flight testing under a variety of weather conditions since early 1992.