LDACS1 ranging results with Doppler smoothing from new flight experiments

In recent years the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has been actively working on a proposal that extends an L-band Digital Aeronautical Communication System type 1 (LDACS1) to future Alternative Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (APNT) services. In 2012 a flight measurement campaign has been performed to validate LDACS1-based navigational functionality. The results indicated a strong influence of multipath propagation on ranging performance. To better characterize multipath environment for future ground-based APNT services a second measurement has been performed in November 2013. This paper outlines the November 2013 measurement campaign and provides corresponding range estimation results that make use of Bayesian filtering methods and Doppler smoothing to mitigate multipath and improve range estimation.