Synthetic vision-a view in the fog

The FAA (US Federal Aviation Administration), industry, and DOD (US Department of Defense) are collaborating to evaluate and demonstrate technologies permitting aircraft to land in very low visibilities over a wide range of airports. Called the Synthetic Vision System Technology Demonstration Program, the system concept provides an electronic image of the runway to the pilot on a head-up display with an overlay on the display of symbology, providing all the navigation and performance information needed to fly and land the aircraft. The program incorporates millimeter-wave radar, infrared sensor, head-up display, and airborne computer processing technologies across a wide range of flight scenarios of interest to the civil aviation industry and to a number of government agencies. The theoretical performance of the system concept at 35 GHz is calculated and compared to the actual performance of the 35-GHz experimental demonstration system for typical approach and runway intrusion detection conditions. There is excellent correlation between the two. The results of tower and flight tests to date indicate that, with the experimental system, pilots are routinely able to fly to CAT IIIa minimums on the Type I ILS (instrumental landing system) facilities used in the program to date using the millimeter-wave sensor. Very low visibility fog and precipitation conditions encountered in the test have had little effect on the useful range of the millimeter-wave sensor system