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Method and apparatus for implementing automatic tilt control of a radar antenna on an aircraft
| Details |
Inventors: Conner, Kevin J; Kuntman, Daryal; Morici, Martin M.; Hammack, Stephen D.; Joyce, Jim;
Assignee: AlliedSignal Inc. (Morristown, NJ)
Primary Examiner: Sotomayor; John B.
Assistant Examiner:
Attorney, Agent or Firm:
A method and apparatus for automatically controlling the tilt of a radar antenna to avoid ground clutter returns while scanning the weather formations of most interest. In one embodiment a terrain database is utilized to determine tilt angles for different terrain cells. The tilt angle is determined starting at the aircraft position and working out to the radar range. If a tilt angle for a more distant cell is less than for a nearer cell it is ignored taking shadowing into account. In another embodiment the weighted tilt angle frequencies are entered into a histogram and the histogram is scanned to obtain a tilt angle resulting in an acceptable amount of ground clutter. |
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DETAILED DESCRIPTION The present invention describes a method for automatically determining an optimal antenna tilt angle for all weather display ranges as well as for other radar data gathering functions such as, for example, terrain, turbulence detection, autoland, and/or position validation scans.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, the radar tilt control is managed as a function of flight phase and altitude.
In another embodiment of the invention, a digital terrain database is used to automatically determine tilt angle.
According to one aspect of the invention, the tilt management function is automated by a computer and the weather radar through the use of the aircraft's position and a terrain database.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the automatic tilt control system uses the radar range, aircraft position (latitude, longitude, altitude, and heading); radar specific parameters (radar beam width and sweep limit) and a terrain database (digital elevation model) to compute tilt angle settings for the radar.
The tilt angles are automatically updated when the aircraft changes altitudes, turns or the underlying terrain requires a different tilt angle.
The system will still allow the pilot to override and set a tilt angle manually.
One aspect of the invention is the use of a terrain database to compensate for terrain height variations ahead of the aircraft in different directions.
When setting the tilt value via segmented tilt that allows the radar to be tilt managed over multiple segments of its sweep.
In the weather radar mode, the use of segments improves the radar's ability to minimize ground clutter facilitating better storm cell detection.
One embodiment of the present invention is an automatic radar tilt system based on using the terrain altitude information in the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS).
EGPWS type systems are also known by other acronyms, e.
g.
TAWS for terrain awareness systems, GOCAT and GCAS for ground collision avoidance system
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