VOR Integral Monitoring System

Federal Aviation Administration/VOR Engineering, 2003-04

Liaison(s): Nelson Spohnheimer
Advisor(s): John Molinder
Students(s): Jordan Taggart (PM), Alex Cohan, Gabriel Kwofie, Evan Porter

VHF OmniRange (VOR) facilities use transmitters and antenna systems to radiate signals for aircraft navigation. Sixteen external dipoles currently monitor the signal parameters, and shut the station down if they exceed certain tolerances. In this setup, environmental effects such as snow or ice are known to cause errors in the monitoring dipoles without effecting the signal that the plane receives. Our task was to design and test an integral monitoring system that would catch all failure modes without being prone to these environmental effects.