ADS-B and Multilateration Optimization Patent Awarded to Era

Era has been awarded a patent that includes methods of ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast) tracking and multilateration.  The patent addresses methods of filtering redundant transponder signals, and time-stamping them, before forwarding the information to air traffic control and other users.

Conventional triangulation techniques have required decoding real-time aircraft transponder signal replies at several locations, time-stamping them, and sending them to a central location for processing, which requires a relatively high communications bandwidth between each remote sensor and the central server.  This has been generally viewed as a barrier to large-scale implementation of wide area surveillance networks, especially in more remote regions where there may be limited communications infrastructure.

According to Era, its patented techniques (number 7,248,219) alleviate this problem, by allowing users to manage massive amounts of real-time aircraft transponder information over a variety of existing datalink and network implementations, while accommodating both passive and active surveillance systems.

Era offers its customers a complete surveillance-system package that includes both the hardware and software needed for correlating flight identification data with aircraft registration numbers and a flight's identification with Mode-S and ADS-B transponder transmissions.  For some applications, this creates the same data as an air traffic controller would see, without the need for any active interrogation or connection to any ATC equipment.  08-31-2007.

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