Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 25-8 - 26

For Safer Approach Landing
of the Aircraft: Measuring the
Electromagnetic Interference of
High-Speed Train to ILS and Giving
Protection Recommendations
Hede Lu, Fulong Xu, Qianying Wang, Zhida Chen, and Qiang Zhang
A
pproaching landing is the most difficult and complicated
operation in the entire flight process of the
aircraft, and it is also the stage where frequent flight
accidents occur. According to the statistics released by International
Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), 49% of flight
accidents occurred in the stage of approaching landing. The
Instrument Landing System (ILS), commonly known as the
blind landing system, is the main navigation equipment for
guiding the aircraft's precision approach and landing in the
terminal area of the airport. Therefore, the uninterrupted normal
operation of the ILS is the key to ensuring the safety of
aircraft landing.
With the rapid development of high-speed railway technology
in China, the speed of trains has been increasing
constantly. While this brings great convenience to people, it inevitably
brings some problems of electromagnetic interference
at the same time. Most of the research data shows that with
the increase of speed, the off-line phenomenon between pantograph
and catenary of the train supply system has become
more and more frequent [1]. When the pantograph-catenary
is off-line, it will produce a very strong arc light (that is pantograph-catenary
off-line arc). The pantograph-catenary arc can
radiate electromagnetic pulse into the air, affecting the smooth
operation of surrounding sensitive equipment [2].
In order to protect the civil aviation communication and
navigation equipment of the airport from interference, the airport
has set up an electromagnetic environmental protection
zone, a circular area with a radius of 10 km with the airport
runway as the center where no interference source is allowed.
However, there are some high-speed railways passing though
the airport electromagnetic environmental protection zone
for transfer convenience thus the electromagnetic interference
(EMI) caused by pantograph-catenary arc will have interferential
influence on ILS and will affect the landing safety of the
aircraft. Therefore, it is necessary to measure the electromagnetic
interference of high-speed train pantograph-catenary
arc closely, and it is of great significance to study the impact of
the pantograph-catenary arc on the airport navigation equipment
[3]-[6].
26
In this article, we illustrate the radiation intensity test
results and the radiation characteristics of pantograph arc electromagnetic
interference. Then, we examine some previous
work and propose a new analysis method to study the influence
of pantograph-catenary arc when the high-speed train
passes the airport parallel to the airport runway. In the end,
we put forward the minimum protection distance between the
phase separation and the runway at the airport. The research
in this article will provide some information with reference
to railway and airport planning and site selection, which is of
great essence to the safety of civil aviation.
Current Research Situation and
Deficiencies
Airport electromagnetic interference has always been an important
factor affecting the flight safety of civil aviation. There
are several types of sources leading to electromagnetic interference
at the airport, for example, broadcast, pseudo base
station, high-voltage transmission lines, high-speed trains,
etc. High-speed trains have the greatest impact on the airport
electromagnetic interference due to their strong radiation intensity
[7]-[10].
S. Midya et al. researched the EMI of pantograph arcing in
European rail traffic management systems [11]-[13]. However,
the situation in China is much different from that in
Europe. Other research in the literature proposed a model to
analyze the interference of the pantograph-catenary arc. The
electromagnetic interference test analysis of airport communication
and navigation signals mainly focused on the Very
High Frequency (VHF) communication system, VHF Omnidirectional
Rang (VOR) and Distance measuring Equipment
(DME) [3], [4], [9], [15]-[18], etc. In fact, these communication
and navigation stations require low precision, so that
EMI sources have little effect on them. In [5], [6], authors put
forward the analysis method of the EMI influence of pantograph-catenary
arc on ILS, yet the current analysis of these
stations is not meaningful.
Nevertheless, there still exist some deficiencies in the research
concerning the EMI influence of pantograph-catenary
IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine
1094-6969/22/$25.00©2022IEEE
November 2022
Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 25-8

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