Modeling and control of an LED-based airfield lighting system

Updating incandescent-based airfield taxiway and runway lighting systems with LED technology offers many advantages, including longer service life and improved efficiency. However, incorporating LEDs directly into an existing airfield infrastructure offers several challenges. Chief among these is ensuring that light output is uniform across distances that may reach several kilometers. In this research, a model has been developed to characterize the behavior of LED lighting systems for airfield applications. The model includes the saturated dynamics of isolation transformers, a distributed representation of the airfield cable, diode rectification, and the dynamics of a current-regulated isolated power supply. Herein the details of the model, including its validation, are first described. Subsequently, the model is used in the development of a controller that can overcome the problem of nonuniform lighting that results from transmission-line effects introduced by long cable runs.