Civilian and military aircraft currently utilize a variety of systems to provide aircraft navigation capabilities. Satellite based global position systems (GPS) represent the most commonly implemented navigation support system and are utilized ubiquitously throughout aviation. Due to the existence of intermittent GPS malfunction, it is desirable to provide additional navigation systems. Various other types of systems have been implemented in the known art in order to provide stand alone navigation capabilities as well as navigation backup functions for associated GPS systems. Such auxiliary navigation systems may include, for example, inertial based navigations systems (INS) and weather radar. Both of these systems, however, carry with them undesirable aspects. For example, INS based navigation systems are typically quite expensive. In addition, weather radar based navigation systems are often unavailable and are susceptible to reduced performance due to weather conditions. It is therefore desirable to produce a navigation and GPS backup system utilizing one or more aircraft system(s) that are readily available and which obviate the shortcomings of the known art.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds