Amt 7 3801 2014
Amt 7 3801 2014
Amt 7 3801 2014
, 7, 3801–3811, 2014
www.atmos-meas-tech.net/7/3801/2014/
doi:10.5194/amt-7-3801-2014
© Author(s) 2014. CC Attribution 3.0 License.
Received: 19 February 2014 – Published in Atmos. Meas. Tech. Discuss.: 7 May 2014
Revised: 1 October 2014 – Accepted: 6 October 2014 – Published: 18 November 2014
L5 signal for terrestrial users on Earth from the GPS satellites models when compared against the industry standard (Healy
has little if any impact for DME–TACAN operators. Further- et al., 2005). All previous missions have utilized the L1
more, the pulsed localized nature of the DME–TACAN sig- and L2 GPS frequencies and have exceeded expectations
nals has minimal impact on terrestrial GPS L5 users as there with respect to weather forecasting (Melbourne, 2004).
are limited DME–TACAN sources in close proximity to any However, the planned implementation of the L5 frequency
terrestrial user and code division multiple access (CDMA) in a dual-frequency configuration offers an opportunity to
modulation of GPS is robust against pulsed interference. improve upon these results. The Formosat-7 / COSMIC-2
While most users of GPS L5 will experience minimal (Constellation-Observing System for Meteorology, Iono-
degradation from DME–TACAN interference, GPS RO is sphere, and Climate) mission is a future joint mission be-
one such application in which even a slight degraded C / No tween Taiwan and the United States that aims to utilize
would have a significant impact on results. This system is im- L5 receivers for reasons of increased power, overall im-
plemented today for use in weather forecasting and has been provement of signal structure, and the civil designation of
proven to be a very powerful and reliable tool. The architec- the transmission (Mannucci et al., 2012). The TriG (Tri-
ture of a GPS RO system consists of a satellite in LEO receiv- GPS–GNSS–RO) receiver is one such receiver developed to
ing a signal from a GPS satellite. The LEO satellite houses utilize these characteristics of the L5 band (Esterhuizen et al.,
a set of antennas pointed towards the limb of the Earth in or- 2009).
der to detect and measure refraction as the signal propagates
through the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result of this directive 2.2 Distance measuring equipment
orientation of the receiving antenna, these satellites may in-
cur DME–TACAN interference that could obstruct RO data The architecture of the DME system offers a method to
collection. The architecture of GPS RO will be discussed in determine distance from an aircraft to a ground station
further detail in the following section. (Fisher, 2004). The DME architecture is comprised of an air-
borne interrogator and a ground-based transponder that op-
erates in four codes (X, Y , W , Z). However, the X code
2 Background is the only possible interferer with respect to the L5 fre-
quency. The aircraft interrogates within a frequency range of
2.1 Radio occultation 1025–1150 MHz, whereas the ground station transmits over
frequencies between 1151 and 1213 MHz within X mode
The utilization of GPS RO in weather forecasting has spurred (Bastide et al., 2004). Therefore, any airborne interroga-
a further advancement in forecasting accuracy. Utilizing the tion within this architecture does not directly impinge upon
GPS satellite network, RO techniques leverage the stabil- any signal transmitted over the L5 frequency. A number of
ity and global coverage of the GPS network in order to DME–TACAN ground stations, however, transmit within this
provide higher-accuracy temperature, pressure, and humid- frequency range and could become a source of interference
ity data (Healy et al., 2005). The process involves a sound- for L5 transmissions. For this reason, DME–TACAN ground
ing technique where a satellite emits a radio wave whose stations will be the focus for determining interoperability
path is then perturbed by an intervening planetary atmo- within the L5 frequency for GPS RO applications.
sphere before reaching the receiver (Kursinski et al., 1997). A DME ground station transmits in pulse pairs with a pulse
Earth-based RO specifically involves a GPS satellite trans- period of 12 µs and a half-amplitude pulse width of 3.5 µs
mitting a signal to a receiving satellite orbiting in LEO. After (Ostermeier, 2010). This signal structure can be seen in
the transmitted radio wave is refracted, phase and amplitude Fig. 1. In addition, DME stations either operate at a high
variation at the receiver is observed over time in order to de- power of 1000 W or at a low power of 100 W. During peak
fine the refractive properties of the surrounding atmosphere activity, a DME station transmits up to 2700 pulse pairs per
(Melbourne, 2004). The refraction of the signal causes an ex- second. The effective width of each pulse is defined to be 8 µs
cess phase in the dual-frequency carrier phase results as seen taking into account a 1 µs desaturation time for the receiver.
by the GPS receiver in LEO (Ware et al., 1996). By observ- Using this effective pulse width and the pulse pair rate pre-
ing the degree of refraction, one can gain insight into the ver- viously defined, a single DME pulse duty cycle is calculated
tical distribution of atmospheric pressure, temperature, and to be 0.0432 s−1 (Roturier, 2001). Therefore, a single DME
humidity. The atmospheric depth of RO retrievals is currently transmitter at its peak is seen 4.32 % of the time by an L5
limited by the available signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR). Addi- receiver.
tional SNR and increased signal-to-interference-plus-noise A TACAN station has many of the same characteristics as
ratio (SINR) would allow for lower atmospheric data to be a DME station. However, unlike DME stations which trans-
obtained. mit at a constant power of 100 or 1000 W, a TACAN station’s
Previous Earth-based occultation missions, such as transmission power ranges cyclically (sinusoidally at 135 and
GPS–Met and CHAMP (CHAllenging Minisatellite Pay- 15 Hz) up to 3500 W. These stations are consequently high-
load), improved upon numerical weather prediction (NWP) powered military versions of their DME counterpart.
Figure 10. Plot of the gain pattern of 5100A DME antenna with
respect to elevation angle (dB Systems Inc., 2013).
Table 1. Name, location, and corresponding transmission frequency of DME–TACAN stations within ±10 MHz of 1176.45 MHz in the
United States.
Table 1. Continued.
Table 1. Continued.
Table 1. Continued.
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