Presented to: By: Date: Federal Aviation Administration Early Tests of Aircraft Tracking on NWRT PAR Working Group William Benner, Weather Processors Team Manager December 5, 2006

Federal Aviation Administration 2 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 History Performed National Weather Radar Testbed (NWRT) Hardware Upgrades –Installed Digital Multiplexer for parallel processing No impact to existing weather mission Allows data to be fed to both the weather and surveillance Digital Signal Processors (DSPs) –Installed surveillance/track DSP (SKY) provides aircraft tracking capability SKY Computers Inc. has since been dissolved Delivered, installed and tested surveillance/track processor software

Federal Aviation Administration 3 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 NWRT Architecture with Tracking Systran Link Exchange Card (Multiplexer)

Federal Aviation Administration 4 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 Results Demonstrated initial tracking capability NWRT data compared with simultaneous ASR-9 data to validate surveillance tracks –Data analysis and visual comparison confirmed tracks from the NWRT were valid detections Proved the Potential for Multi-functional Phased Array Radar –Gathered concurrent weather and surveillance data –No Impact on NWRT operations or performance –Low track fidelity and resolution due to lack of monopulse

Federal Aviation Administration 5 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 NWRT Data gathered September 2005

Federal Aviation Administration 6 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 ASR- 9 Data gathered September 2005

Federal Aviation Administration 7 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 Correlated Data from NWRT & ASR-9 Black arrows indicate ASR-9 Data Blue Circles indicate NWRT Data

Federal Aviation Administration 8 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 NWRT Altitude Measurement NWRT measurement limited due to lack of monopulse NWRT angular resolution is about 1.5 o which equates to about a 2400 foot altitude error at 30nm. Aircraft transition to lower beam results in a large altitude shift (~4800ft). However, NWRT altitude coarsely tracks with ASR-9 tracks.

Federal Aviation Administration 9 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 ASR-9 vs NWRT Altitude Comparison

Federal Aviation Administration 10 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 Current Developments Developing Surveillance/Track management capability –Correlated track database allows active tracking of aircraft Enhancing real-time surveillance/track processor –Improved real-time SKY process scheduler allows faster radar scan rates Track Processor processes first four pulses in a dwell Scheduler used during test only able to complete processing for dwells of 16 pulses or more - Goal is to handle all pulse/dwell schemes Allows users to continue evaluating the potential multi-functional capability of the NWRT system

Federal Aviation Administration 11 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 Current Developments continued Remote site display capability –XML formatted data output will enable shared, web based Weather and Tracking displays –Remote site display planned for WJHTC and NSSL Provide data to University of Oklahoma for continuing research –OU Radar Engineering is currently researching target detection methodologies in order to separate surveillance data from weather data more easily

Federal Aviation Administration 12 Early Tests on MPAR Aircraft Tracking December 5, 2006 Future R&D/Tasking Upgrade NWRT to perform monopulse tracking –Improve tracking accuracy and resolution Modify Real-time Controller/Scheduler –Implement adaptive closed loop tracking and scanning system Facilitate hardware and software technology insertion –Initial investigation of possible future SKY equipment replacement completed, PC based solution will need to be finalized with state of the art equipment when needed –Support future NWRT upgrades