Limitations of Flight Path Reconstruction techniques

Abstract

The Flight Path Reconstruction (FPR) techniques are performed to verify the data compatibility check and post-flight. This is often achieved by calibrating the onboard sensors such as inertial and airdata sensors. In this paper, the limitations of FPR techniques in terms of Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF) have been reported. To demonstrate the FPR and sensor calibration, kinematic trajectory simulations with wind box type maneuvers have been performed. It is also shown as how a kinematic simulation is valid for the studies carried out in this work.

Wind Profile Estimation during Flight Path Reconstruction

“…EKF with stochastic modelling of wind components works well for long duration manoeuvres and yields wind estimates and air data flow angles with improved accuracy. However, improper tuning of the error covariance matrices may adversely affect the results from EKF 19 . Also, artificially defining wind components as additional states in EKF would increase the number of parameters in the error model, which may lead to observability and identifiability issues.…”