Wind Turbines and their Impact on Navigation Systems - Results of the min-VOR-Win Project

This contribution summarizes the results of a research project that investigated possible disturbances of the very high frequency omnidirectional radio range by multipath propagation with wind turbines. Such multipath propagation issues are analyzed in a miniaturized environment in the scale of 1:144 where the operating frequency of the navigation systems is translated to 16 GHz. A variety of measurements are performed under well-controlled parameter variations which cannot be realized in original scale environments. Such parameters are wing geometry, distance between wind turbines and the navigation system, rotational speed, and wing orientation. Additionally, flight test in real scale environments are performed as hypothesis test for predictions based on results in the scaled measurement environment. Another particular focus of this work is the development and the application of real receiver models that take into account both dynamic scatterers and a plurality of scatterers.