Optimal on-airport monitoring of the integrity of GPS-based landing systems

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based radio navigation system. The Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) is a version of Differential GPS (DGPS) designed to reliably support aircraft precision approaches. The Integrity Monitor Testbed (IMT) is a prototype of the LAAS Ground Facility (LGF) that is used to evaluate whether the LGF can meet system integrity requirements. To insure high integrity, the IMT has a variety of monitors to detect all possible failures. It also contains a failure-handling logic, known as Executive Monitoring (EXM), to exclude faulty measurements and recover once the failure disappears. Spatial ionospheric gradients are major threats to the LAAS. One focus of this thesis is exploring methods to quickly detect ionospheric gradients given the required low probability of false alarms.; The first part of the thesis introduces GPS, LAAS, and the IMT and explains the algorithms and functionalities of IMT integrity monitors in detail. It then analyzes the failure responses of the integrity monitors under the most general measurement failure model. This analysis not only qualitatively maps the integrity monitors into the entire failure space, but also provides a tool to quantitatively compare the performance of different integrity monitors.; In addition, the analysis examines the limitations of the existing monitors in detecting small but hazardous ionospheric gradients. The divergence Cumulative Sum (CUSUM) method is then derived and assessed. It can reduce the time required to detect marginal ionospheric gradients by about 30%. With the divergence CUSUM method implemented in the IMT, system integrity and performance are greatly improved.; Different monitors can respond to the same failures. The last part of this thesis shows that the combination of these different monitors can detect certain failures more quickly than any individual monitor. This idea leads to a new method, called failure-specific testing, which can significantly improve the detection speed of small failures, including ionospheric gradients. Used as aids to diagnosis and exclusion, failure-specific tests can soften the current EXM logic so that the LAAS can meet the tighter continuity requirements that apply to Category III precision landings.