Preliminary Study on Receiving Status at MLAT Station and Estimated Aircraft Position

This paper is concerned with an analysis of the receiving status of 1090 MHz Mode S signals observed at multilateration (MLAT) receiver stations. The MLAT system uses the Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) technique to estimate aircraft positions. Consequently, the receiving status of each receiver station differs corresponding to the allocation of receivers and actual aircraft positions. In this paper, we show the amounts of signals detected at MLAT receiver stations. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the receiving status and the estimated position accuracy depend on the propagation path between the receiver and the aircraft.