VHF Omnidirectional Range (VOR) Experimental Positioning for Stratospheric Vehicles

Abstract

The usage of aeronautical radio-frequency navigational aids can support the future stratospheric aviation as back-up positioning systems. Although GNSS has been extensively redundant in the last years of space operations, radio NavAids can still be supportive of navigation and tracking for novel mission profiles. As an example, in 2016, VHF Omnidirectional Range (VOR) has been proven to work well above its standard service volume limit on a stratospheric balloon flight with the STRATONAV experiment. While VOR provides the “radial” measurement, i.e., the angle between the Magnetic North and the line between the receiver and the transmitting ground station, the intersection of two or more radials at a time allows to perform ground track reconstruction for the vehicle to be tracked. This paper reports the results from the data re-processing from STRATONAV: the acquired radials have been intersected in order to achieve positioning. The radials interfacing method, the position calculation methodology, and the data acquisition strategies from STRATONAV are reported together with the data analysis results.