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Performance evaluation of tropospheric correction model for GBAS in China

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Abstract

Ground-based augmentation system (GBAS) is a safety of life system that supports precision approach, landing, departure and surface operations in civil aviation. To compensate the tropospheric delay difference encountered at the aircraft and ground stations, empirical tropospheric correction (TC) models are applied. Scale height is one of the key parameters in TC models, while there are various methods to estimate scale heights and their performance is not fully evaluated, which affects the integrity and poses threats to GBAS. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the performance of TC models when using different scale height estimation methods by exploiting analytical products, including the European center for medium-range weather forecasts and meteorological data from the stations deployed in the crustal movement observation network of China in 2021. Taking the effects of virtual temperature and station height anomaly into consideration, a modified ray-tracing algorithm is proposed to calculate the tropospheric delay error, which is the difference of tropospheric delay between that encountered, respectively, at the GBAS station and the aircraft. The calculated tropospheric delay error serves as a reference to evaluate the performance of TC models. Results show that the TC model bias in the zenith direction estimated by the different scale height methods is approximately equal in the GBAS approach service type C. When the elevation is lower than 20°, there is a significant bias induced by the mapping function of TC models. Additionally, the TC model bias increases with height for GBAS precision approach service. The maximum TC model bias in the zenith direction at most stations exceeds 20 mm. The occurrence probability of anomaly with TC model bias more than 10 mm with a higher than 20% at a height of 400 m. This study contributes to better understanding of the GBAS TC model performance in China. It provides valuable insights and guidance for developing more precise TC models.

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Data availability

ERA5 and meteorological datasets were obtained from https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/ and https://data.earthquake.cn/, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the researchers and engineers at the National Key Laboratory of CNS/ATM for their advices and interests. The work was carried out with the financial support from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant nos. 2020YFB0505603), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 62022012, 62101019, U2033215 and U2233217), the Civil Aviation Security Capacity Building Fund Project (grant nos. CAAC Contract 2020(123), CAAC Contract 2021(77) and CAAC Contract 2022(110)).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronics and Information Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Yanbo Zhu, Honglin Tang, Zhipeng Wang, Shujing Wang & Yiming Wang

  2. Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Beihang University, Beijing, 100191, China

    Kai Guo

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  1. Yanbo Zhu
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  2. Honglin Tang
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  3. Zhipeng Wang
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  4. Kai Guo
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Contributions

YZ and HT initiated the study. HT and KG wrote the manuscript with support from ZW. SW and YW helped to collect data and provided some helpful suggestions. All authors provided critical feedbacks and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kai Guo.

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Zhu, Y., Tang, H., Wang, Z. et al. Performance evaluation of tropospheric correction model for GBAS in China. GPS Solut 28, 109 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-024-01646-2

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