Experimental data analysis for ground-air propagation with airborne ADS-B signal

The characteristics of the ground-air propagation is an important basis for the design of airborne radio systems, and the experimental data of ground-air propagation are of fundamental importance for the development and testing of prediction models. In order to study the characteristics of the wave propagation of the air mobile service in depth, the signal of airborne automatic dependent surveillance broadcast(ADS-B) system is used to get the experimental data of the ground-air propagation. The experimental data are analyzed, and the results show that the measured transmission loss data have the similar variation trend with the ones predicted by ITU-R P.528-3 and the free space propagation model. Meanwhile, we use the parabolic equation method to simulate the propagation of the airborne ADS-B signal in different refractive conditions, and the compared result shows that the measured data and the simulated ones have a great agreement. The result of analysis indicates that the experimental data of ground-air propagation obtained by ADS-B signal is reliable, and are of great significance for the future use of ADS-B signal to accumulate the propagation data and will improve the propagation model.