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