AIRBORNE COLLISION AVOIDANCE SYSTEM AND METHOD OF DETERMINING RADIO FREQUENCY LINK RELIABILITY FOR AIRCRAFT TRACKING

摘要

An aircraft system (10) and method (400, 500) for determining when to attempt acquisition of an intruder (210, 220, 226) for active tracking. A link reliability score (356) associated with the intruder (210, 220, 226) is adjusted based upon the signal strength of transmissions, the frequency of the transmissions, and the number of previous attempts to acquire the intruder (210, 220, 260) for active tracking. Once a given threshold link validity value (324) is reached by the link reliability score (356), an RF link is predicted to be reliable and the aircraft system (100) attempts to acquire the range of the intruder aircraft (210, 220, 260) for active tracking. A traffic adivsory (14), in accordance with the track, alerts a pilot (230) to avoid collision with the intruder aircraft (210, 220, 260).