FIS-B service tiering and recommended avionics processing algorithms

Flight Information System - Broadcast (FIS-B) is one of the services provided by ITT's Surveillance and Broadcast Services System (SBSS) under contract to the FAA. This paper describes the technical details of a tiered service structure which has been implemented to provide a more efficient usage of bandwidth available to the FIS-B service over the UAT RF frequency. The paper begins with a background description of the FIS-B service implementation and the bandwidth constraints of the UAT RF frequency. Succeeding sections describe the FIS-B tiering concepts and motivations, Service Volume design examples, predicted airspace coverage, an implementation and testing schedule, description of the impact to existing UAT avionics/displays, recommended algorithms for airborne processing of FIS-B data, and a summary description of a sample FIS-B data set.