Flight Safety Enhancement Through Airspeed Estimation

Abstract

The paper provides a solution for total wind field reconstruction (3 dimensional airspeed, 3 dimensional wind speed, angle of attack, sideslip angle) in the presence of unknown wind disturbances. The method relies on LTI models of an aircraft at distinct airspeed values. The wind field estimation is carried out by the Multiple Model Adaptive Estimation approach. The applicability of the proposed approach is evaluated during simulations on the NASA Airstar platform. A waypoint following control architecture has been designed, which consists of PID and LPV controllers. To demonstrate the reliability of the proposed approach, the LPV controller is scheduled by the estimated airspeed, without significant performance degradation.