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Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering "Guglielmo Marconi" - DEI

How to [safely] land a plane using antennas and engineering

The seminar will be given by Andrea Chucurachi and Roberto Mariani, Thales Italia S.p.A., as part of the course "Antennas for Wireless Systems."

  • Date: 31 May 2023 from 12:00 to 14:00

  • Event location: Room 5.2, viale Risorgimento 2, Bologna

  • Access Details: Free admission

Abstract

Since the 1930s pilots have been able to know their relative position with respect to the runway thanks to antennas and clever engineering: the ILS (Instrumental landing system) was born. The ILS was (and still is) a robust means to drive from ground any aircraft on the correct landing path, without any knowledge of the aircraft presence or position. We will review how a 90 year old technology is still the most reliable and widespread solution to relay this information, and how its spatially-dependent modulation is achieved by means of antenna arrays in the UHF and VHF bands. We will also discuss in more detail how some of these array systems operate, with a mix of theory and practice, reviewing some of the solutions that Thales designs, installs and maintains all over the world.