Multilateration Systems for Ground Control

Multilateration systems are being implemented at many international airports to provide air traffic control information at a higher rate than most traditional radar systems provide. Additionally, multilateration systems can use data from small transponders to track the movements of ground-based vehicles on active surfaces.

These systems utilize triangulation along with highly precise signal timing known as Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA). High-speed signal acquisition and computer processing techniques are used to convert individual time differences of receiving stations to precise coordinates for moving objects of interest.

Our client needed additional engineering resources that could quickly augment their development team for the development and deployment of new multilateration systems. The collaborative skills of Vanteon’s engineers along with our experience in Software Defined Radio systems and high-speed embedded systems provided a fresh perspective and a lift to the total resources for product realization.

Services Provided
• Requirements review & system design
• Hardware architecture, design, development, prototyping
• Firmware and HDL code development
• Link-margin analysis, RF-IF down-conversion analysis
• Validation, verification, documentation

Technologies
• FPGA, soft processor, demodulator architecture
• Analog device AD9957 DUC
• Controller board & RF board, VME
• Transmission decoding, time-stamping, synchronization