Navigation an Aircraft by means of a Position potential in three dimensional space

The main thesis: We assume that the unavailability of GPS information in certain time intervals will be compensated by the implementation of the mathematical model, which will process the aircraft co-ordinates on the basis of the last received position. The study has been divided into four chapters aiming at and presenting the solutions of the above mentioned research problems: Chapter 1 - "Review of the Literature". The analysis also concerned mathematical models designed to supplement GPS satellite navigation system. Chapter 2, "En-route Flights - Aircraft Position Accuracy Assessment", comprises the analysis of author's flight experiments, carried out between 1999 and 2003. Chapter 3, "Approach and Landing Phase - Aircraft Position Accuracy Assessment", tackles the problem of aircraft landing accuracy in flight experiments, which compared the accuracy of landings using the Air Traffic Control Radar Landing System (RALS) with GPS-assisted landings. Chapter 4, "Navigating By Means of a Navigation Potential In Space", proposes a new solution being a development of Vanicek's theory [Benlin Xu, Vanicek P. 2000] by expanding it into the third dimension. The presented mathematical model fills the gap in determining aircraft position in the instance of the lack of navigation information. Knowing the position is of vital importance on the glide path, when the accident risk is very high in adverse weather conditions