[Navigation] ILS: Instrument Landing System

Definition:

ILS provides lateral and vertical guidance to an aircraft approaching and landing on a runway.

The aircraft is guided by the ILS receiver on the plane through performing modulation depth comparison (DDM: Difference in the depth of modulation).

ILS consists of two independent sub-system:

• Localizer: for lateral guidance, along the axis of runway
• Glide path: for vertical guidance

Thus ILS also has two radio frequencies, 110 MHz for Localizer and 330MHz for Glide path

Localizer

• Carrier wave frequency: 108 - 112 MHz
• The carrier wave is modulated into 90Hz and 150Hz respectively
• Although 2 modulated tones (90 and 150Hz) are given, the antenna array only sends one beam, where these two pure AM signals are mixed and create two other signals: CSB and SBO.
• CSB (Carrier with sidebands) and SBO (sidebands only)
  
  • When spread into space, these two signals are combined by space modulation
  • Space modulation: incorporates the use of multiple antennas and fed with various radio frequency power and phase to create the depth of modulation within various volumes of three-dimensional air space.
• Clearance signal:
  
  • It is very difficult to obtain a highly directional beam, like the course beam, without residual secondary lobes.
  • The clearance signal is sent together with course signal to flood these secondary lobes whose power is relatively limited.
  • The clearance signal has a power level of 10 dB less than the course level (a tenth of the power) and is radiated with a less directional pattern.
• The DDM for a localizer at the outer extremity of the course sector is 0.155

Tutorial

Glide Path

• Frequency Band: 329-335 MHz
• Provide vertical guidance to ensure the airplane follow the glide path which is approximately 3 degree above the horizontal ground level.
• 5 different types of glide-type arrays are in used, three of them are image arrays, which are null-reference system (with 2 antennas 14 and 28 above the ground level), side-band reference system and capture-effect system (with 3 antennas, 14, 28 and 42 above the ground level).
• Each antenna and its image form a two-element interferometer, multiple lobes are produced along the vertical plane (but actually the produced signal should provide vertical guidance)

VOR

VHF (Very High Frequency) Omni-Directional Range: short-range radio navigation system, enabling aircraft to determine their position and stay on course by receiving signal from the fixed ground transmitter.

• included signal:
  
  • omni-directional master signal (reference signal)
  • highly directional second signal (variable signal), whose phase is shifted clockwise w.r.t a reference direction.

By comparing the phase of secondary signal with the master signal, the angle to the aircraft from the station can be determined.

• The line of position is called “radial” from the VOR
• The intersection of radials from two VOR stations can be used to fix the aircraft position.