ACTIVE BEACON COLLISION AVOIDANCE LOGIC EVALUATION. VOLUME II. COLLISION AVOIDANCE (BCAS) THREAT PHASE

Abstract : The purpose of this project was to evaluate and refine the April 1979 version of the Beacon Collision Avoidance System (BCAS) logic prior to Active BCAS prototype flight testing. The April 1979 version of the BCAS logic added changes to support multiple aircraft conflict resolution, Conflict Indicator Register (CIR) interfacing and new surveillance logic interfacing. The results of the first phase of the Active BCAS logic, evaluating the Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon System (ATCRBS) threat phase, identified several improvements that should be made to the BCAS logic. These improvements were incorporated into the logic prior to beginning the second phase, the BCAS equipped threat phase. The second phase was conducted from September to November 1979 and was designed to evaluate the BCAS performance against BCAS equipped threats. The results are presented in this report. Several logic improvements have been identified. These changes have been implemented in both the threat logic and the BCAS command coordination logic (CIR logic). In general, BCAS performance for equipped threats was not as sensitive to vertical rate tracker noise as in the ATCRBS threat case. Resolution performance has been improved through a reduction in undesirable BCAS alarms and by reducing excessive separation with the inclusion of a projected vertical miss distance (VMD) filter for equipped threats. A better method of selecting threat volume parameters has been incorporated.