Distance Measuring Equipment

AEC DME Program

  • 20 Years Longevityin the MLS/DME area
  • Program funded at greater than than $500K/year over the last 5 years

DME System

  • Consists of Airborne Side and Ground Side
  • Utilizes 2-way Ranging
    • Airborne side requests response
    • Ground side transmits response
    • Airborne side measures the distance from total response time
  • Supports Both Navigation and Landing

AEC Research Areas

  • Performance Specification FAA-E-2996
  • The baseline equipment specification used by the FAA for DME ground equipment
  • Avionics Engineering Center headed the specification development for the FAA

DME Interrogation Rate Measurement System (DIRMS)

  • Proposed to FAA to determine actual amount of DME traffic
  • Highly mobile, setup time of one hour
  • Data collected and analyzed from three sites (Cleveland Corridor, Atlanta, and Chicago O’Hare)
  • Newly-awarded FAA project will involve follow-up data collection in Atlanta and subsequent analysis

System Design Approval (SDA)

  • Approval of system to be used by the FAA but not purchased (Non-Fed)
  • One part of the SDA is Stability Demonstration
  • Independent monitoring of tested system
  • Synthesized traffic environment created for tested system

Mobile DME Ground Station

  • Supported FAA Spectrum Office DME flight test
  • Fully operational DME ground system
  • Highly mobile, setup time of two hours
  • Sites include Pittsburgh, Norfolk, and Atlantic City

Next Generation DME Operation

  • Support of current FAA DME Acquisition effort
  • Support of DME utilization in FAA NextGen Planning
  • Student project through the Ohio Space Grant Consortium OSCG project consisted of NextGen DME test/validation platform