Author(s)

Ron Vincent, Richard Van Der Pryt

Department of Physics, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

The development of space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) will allow surveillance of aircraft in areas not covered by radar or ground-based ADS-B systems. In September 2016, the Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment-7 (CanX-7) satellite was launched into a 690 km sun synchronous orbit with an ADS-B receiver payload. The first phase of ADS-B data collection took place over the North Atlantic between 4 and 31 October. A preliminary assessment of the data indicates that the average ADS-B signal strength is close to the calculated receiver detection threshold of D94.5 ± 0.5 dBm. The pattern of received ADS-B reception appears to be consistent with a signal propagation model developed for the CanX-7 mission. Future work includes the comparison of coincidental flight plan data for the operations area and an analysis of the payload antenna pattern.

ADS-B, Space-Based ADS-B, CanX-7, Air Traffic Control

Vincent, R. and Van Der Pryt, R. (2017) The CanX-7 Nanosatellite ADS-B Mission: A Preliminary Assessment. Positioning, 8, 1-11. doi: 10.4236/pos.2017.81001.