GNSS-based curved landing approaches with a virtual receiver

The civil aviation of the future should be ecological, economical, and safe. The citizens in metropolises have on the one hand the need to travel efficiently between airports near the city. On the other hand they, do not want to suffer from noise and emission of airplanes starting and landing at airports close to cities. Consequently, the future airplane should harmonize these needs. In order to fulfill these requirements new concepts for departure and approach procedures are mandatory. Curved approaches are one solution since critical regions can be omitted. These complex maneuvers can only be carried out with the help of satellite navigation systems. One major challenge of curved approaches is the changing obstruction of satellite signals due to shadowing effects by the aircraft itself during curved approaches. Existing GPS landing systems suffer therefore degraded performance (continuity, availability, integrity and accuracy) during curved approaches, especially with higher roll angles and at high and low latitudes.