GPS Based Aircraft Collision Avoidance

Student: Ryan Flux

Supervisor: Vaughan Clarkson

Category: Engineering Thesis Project - Communications

From 1991 to 2001 the Commercial Aircraft Sector has enjoyed quite an impressive safety record with only 17 fatalities in 3 accidents. On the other hand, the General Aviation Category (including gliders, light planes and recreational aircraft) has had a worse safety record with 455 fatalities and 2339 accidents in the same time frame.

Although such accidents cannot be attributed to a single cause, one of the factors involved is the fact that collision avoidance systems are not compulsory for the aircraft in the general aviation category. The main reason for this is that this equipment is not affordable for most recreational pilots.

In order to rectify this, and lower the human toll, a solution called GPS Based Collision Avoidance has been implemented as a test concept. As the name suggests this solution uses the Global Positioning Satellites to avoid mid-air collisions between the aircraft. Even more importantly this solution has been designed to be as cost effective as possible to allow recreational pilots to use the technology.

Although the solution will not cure all the problems associated with the General Aviation Category. It will be able to reduce the mid-air collisions that occur and possibly reduce the number of fatalities in the field. Additionally this technology may be expanded upon to prevent other accidents.

The system is a simple solution to the problem utilising a Compaq iPaq acting as a display unit, a microcontroller board with a MSP430 microprocessor, a GPS receiver to gather positional information and synchronise the whole system and finally, a TRF6900 transceiver to send and receive data from the nearby aircraft.

Thesis Document (PDF)

Poster Presentation (PDF)