Research on an EGPWS/TAWS simulator with forward-looking alerting function

A Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) is a safety net that provides automatically a timely and distinctive warning to the flight crew when the airplane is in potentially hazardous proximity to the earth's surface. But GPWS has a serious limitation, which is unable to predict a sudden change in terrain, such as meeting steeply rising ground. A mathematical model of forward-looking alerting is introduced, which is used to Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) in order to overcome the above limitation. That is a broader term ‘terrain awareness and warning system’ (TAWS). An EGPWS/TAWS simulator with six basic warning function and forward looking terrain avoidance (FLTA) function were designed and introduced in this paper, which were based on RTCA/DO-161A with ARINC 429 network. At last, a simplified FLTA model was proposed to research alert time threshold setting, which was an effectively approach to solve this crucial problem in EGPWS/TAWS FLTA model.