Aircraft location and identification system

DETAILED DESCRIPTION The foregoing and other problems are overcome by an aircraft location and identification system, including a first position determining portion located aboard a transmitting aircraft for determining a first set of present positional and tracking information described relating to said transmitting aircraft.
A transmitting portion is included for transmitting the first set of present positional and tracking information to a receiving aircraft.
A second position determining portion, which is located aboard the receiving aircraft, determines a second set of present positional and tracking information relating to the receiving aircraft.
A computing portion is located aboard the receiving aircraft and/or a ground based facility which utilizes present and past values of the first set of present positional and tracking information to derive a corresponding first probabilistic future tracking configuration of the transmitting aircraft.
The computing portion also utilizes present and past values of the second set of the present positional and tracking information to derive a corresponding second probabilistic future tracking configuration of the receiving aircraft.
It is significant in the present invention that the time of day (TOD) signals from GPS satellites are provided into a Kalman filter to determine the future probabilistic tracking of each of the aircraft on the screen.
The distance that an aircraft travels in any set period (such as between subsequent GPS signals) changes depending upon the velocity of the aircraft.
Velocities of the aircraft are utilized by the Kalman filter in determining future potential trajectories of the aircraft.
The future probabilistic tracking and present location of the aircraft are used to determine the probability of collision based upon the potential tracking of the other aircraft.
If the probability of intersection of the two trajectories of the aircraft reach a predetermined threshold, then an alarm will sound.
Similarly, the probability of intersection of the two trajectories could be displayed on a display within the aircraft, and as seen by air traffic control