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NASA NTRS · Conference Paper

High-Altitude ADS-B Flight Tests on a NASA ER-2 Research Airplane

Published 2023-01-30 From Armstrong Flight Research Center 6 authors
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Attribution

This is the abstract and citation. Full text lives at NASA NTRS — we link out rather than host. All credit to the authors and Armstrong Flight Research Center.

Abstract

Verbatim from NASA NTRS. Not paraphrased, not summarized.

Researchers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Armstrong Flight Research Center (Edwards, California); the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); and Regulus Group, LLC (Atlantic City, New Jersey) collaborated for the flight-test demonstration of an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system equipped on a high-altitude Earth Resources-2 (ER-2) research airplane. The unique ER-2 airplane is a NASA-owned and operated airborne science version of the United States Air Force / Lockheed Martin Aeronautics (Bethesda, Maryland) U-2S airplane. The FAA has mandated that by the year 2020, aircraft operating within certain sections of the United States National Airspace system be equipped with ADS-B Out technology; the research presented in this paper is the first to show how the NASA ADS-B architecture satisfies the mandate for a unique high-altitude aircraft. An exceptional military aircraft design, security protocols, and the performance envelope of the ER-2 airplane made the avionics integration remarkably challenging. The design required the ADS-B avionics to survive the harsh flight environment of the ER-2 airplane. The most prominent challenge was the functional integration of modern civilian avionics into federated military legacy avionics. Flight-test objectives were to certify an ADS-B Out (1090ES) passive surveillance integrated with a Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) I active surveillance system on an ER-2 platform for high-altitude cruise operations. In April 2022, NASA conducted three flights at Edwards Air Force Base (Edwards, California) - each greater than one-hour flight reaching altitudes above 60,000 ft.

Authors

  • Ricardo A. Arteaga Armstrong Flight Research Center
  • Nickolas Demidovich Federal Aviation Administration
  • John Dinofrio Federal Aviation Administration
  • Chuck Greenlow Federal Aviation Administration
  • James G. Nelson Integration Innovation, Inc.
  • Tim Williams Armstrong Flight Research Center

Keywords

  • ADS-B
  • TCAS
  • TAWS
  • AIR
  • DATA

Citation: Ricardo A. Arteaga, Nickolas Demidovich, John Dinofrio , et al. (2023). High-Altitude ADS-B Flight Tests on a NASA ER-2 Research Airplane. Armstrong Flight Research Center. NASA NTRS ID 20220014456. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20220014456 ↗