TeseHM12Jun2012 - Algorith To Identify Abnormal Patterns in Aircraft Fligth Data

Study of Mathematical Algorithms to Identify
Abnormal Patterns in Aircraft Flight Data
Helder Mendes
Dissertação para a Obtenção do Grau de Mestre em

Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores
Júri
Presidente: Prof. Nuno Cavaco Gomes Horta
Orientador: Prof. Bertinho Manuel Andrade da Costa
Vogal: Prof. Agostinho Rui Alves da Fonseca
2012/06/12
Acknowledgements
First of all I would like to thank my family, my wife Fernanda and my sons Afonso
and Mafalda, for providing me the environment for this work to be produced and bear
with my absent time. To my parents for always encouraged my studies in all stages of
my life.
A great word of gratitude to the coordinator of this work, Prof. Bertinho Andrade
Costa from Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas
e Computadores - Investigação e Desenvolvimento (INESC - ID), for his continuous
guidance, support in my doubts and for the long hours spent discussing all the details.
A special word of gratitude to my colleague from TAP Portugal, Engo Manuel Tereno
who was always willing to contribute with his huge knowledge on dierent areas. For
the support and advice.
To my colleagues in TAP from the Flight Data Analysis area, that contribute ev-
eryday for the improvement of the analysis produced.
Abstract
This work presents several techniques to classify Autoland ights starting from the
Standard algorithms provided by the aircraft manufacturers and former software imple-
mentations, evolving then to newer concepts of unidimensional and multidimensional
statistical approaches. Several methods have been tried to distinguish between Normal
from Abnormal automatic landings based on ight data analysis. Together with this
analysis, the automatic procedure to detect and classify new automatic landings was
implemented with the use of Support Vector Machines.
Keywords: Autoland, Flight Data Analysis, Kernel Machines, Support Vector Ma-
chines, Principal Component Analysis, Single Value Decomposition.
Resumo
Neste trabalho são apresentadas várias técnicas de classicação de voos Autoland
(Aterragens Automáticas) com inicio na utilização de algoritmos standard fornecidos
pelos fabricantes de avião e utilizados em programas de análise no passado, evoluindo
para novos conceitos estatísticos de análise unidimensional e multidimensional. Vários
métodos foram testados para fazer a distinção entre aterragens automáticas Normais
e Não Normais com base na análise dos dados de voo. A par desta análise, foi criado
um procedimento automático para detectar e classicar novas aterragens automáticas
com uso de Support Vector Machines.
Palavras-Chave: Aterragens Autoamáticas, Análise de dados de voo, Kernel Ma-
chines,Support Vector Machines, Análise das Componentes Principais, Decomposição
em Valores Singulares.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Aircraft Recording Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.1 Flight Data Recorders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.2 Acquisition Units and Non-Crash Recorders . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.2.3 Flight Data Recording Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3 Flight Data Analysis Software - AGS (Analysis Ground Station) . . . . 10
1.4 Previous Work and Thesis Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.5 Thesis Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2 Autoland Analysis 14
2.1 The Autoland Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Standard Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.1 Poor Integrity (PI) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.2.2 Poor Performance (PPF) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3 Key Point Data Extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.3.1 General Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.3.2 Air Sector Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3.3 Ground Sector Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.3.4 AGS Procedure Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4 Autoland and Autoapproach Decision Logics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.4.1 Logics for Flight Type Determination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.5 Autoland Evaluation with Standard Procedure (PPF and PI) . . . . . . 26
2.6 Histogram Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.6.1 Evaluation File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.7 Outlier Identication and Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.8 Criteria to Identify Abnormal Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.9 Multidimensional Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.9.1 Principal Components Analysis (PCA) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.9.2 Biplot Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.10 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3 Kernel Methods and Support Vector Machines 42

3.1 Introduction to SVMs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.2 Binary Classier - Hard Margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.3 Binary Classier - Soft Margins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.4 Binary Classication - Kernel Trick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4 Presentation of Results 54
4.1 Applications of the methods to novelty data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2 Practical Application - Autoland Flights Year 2011 . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2.1 Input Space ±3σ Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2.2 Principal Components ±3σ Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.2.3 SVM Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.2.4 Conclusions on the Obtained Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.3 Practical Application - Autoland Flights Year 2009 . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.3.1 Input Space ±3σ Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.3.2 Principal Components ±3σ Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.3.3 SVM Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.3.4 Conclusions on the Obtained Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5 Conclusions and Future Work 61

5.1 Conclusions on the obtained results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.2 Future Work and Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.3 Final Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
A Flight Data Extracted from AGS (Airbus A320 eet) 65
B Additional Procedures 69
B.1 Wind Component Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
B.1.1 AGS code for Wind Components Calculation . . . . . . . . . . . 70
B.2 Touch Down Point Determination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
B.2.1 AGS code for Touch Down determination . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
B.3 Baro-Inertial Vertical Speed and Radio Altitude Rate . . . . . . . . . . 76
B.3.1 Gaussian Smoothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
B.3.2 Matlab code for Gaussian Smoothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
B.4 Flaps/Slats Conguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
B.5 Thrust Lever Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
B.6 Threshold Crossing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
B.6.1 AGS code for Threshold Crossing Computation . . . . . . . . . 88
B.7 Localiser and Glide-Slope Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
B.7.1 G/S and LOC Track . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
B.7.2 Localizer and Glide-Slope Units . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
B.8 Calculations Performed After Touch-Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
B.8.1 Time calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
B.8.2 Reverse Type determination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
C Autoland AGS Procedure Code 93
D Support Scripts and Programs 94
E LIBSVM Software and Model Construction 95

E.1 LIBSVM Software Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
E.2 LIBSVM Model Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
E.3 Criteria used to create the Training File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
E.4 Model Construction with LIBSVM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
E.4.1 Scaling the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
E.4.2 Cross Validation - Grid Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
E.4.3 Training - Model Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
E.4.4 Prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
E.4.5 easy.py - script to apply all steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Bibliography 103
List of Figures
1.1 SFIM - Photographic Recorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.2 SFIM - Recorded Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Digital Flight Data Recorder - DFDR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 DFDR - Crash Protected Tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 DFDR - 25 H endless tape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.6 CSMU - Crash Survivable Memory Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.7 Two models of SSFDR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.8 SSCVR(bottom) and SSFDR(top) Aircraft Installation . . . . . . . . . 5
1.9 FDIMU Mandatory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.10 Tape Recorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.11 Tape for Flight Data Recording . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.12 Magneto-Optical Disk Recorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.13 Magneto-Optical Disk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.14 Wireless QAR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.15 Network Layout for WQAR Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.16 FDIMU Non-Mandatory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.17 Flight Data Signal Acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.18 AGS Conception (From Analysis Ground Station V12 Users Manual [10]) 11
1.19 Guidelines for Work Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.1 Flight Data Stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2.2 Primary Flight Display - A320fam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.3 Flight Mode Annunciator (Top of PFD)- A320fam . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 Poor Integrity Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.5 Keypoints - Autoland Modes + Threshold + Touch Down . . . . . . . 20
2.6 Keypoints - Flight Path . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.7 Autoland and Autoapproach Logics with Standard Classication . . . . 22
2.8 Karnaugh Map for Autoland Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.9 Karnaugh Map for Autoapproach Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.10 Karnaugh Map for Invalid Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.11 Results from 10880 Flights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.12 PPF6 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.13 Rate of Descend with Outliers [ft/sec] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.14 Rate of Descend Clean [ft/sec] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.15 Localizer @ Land Track with Outliers [mDDM] . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.16 Localizer @ Land Track Clean [mDDM] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.17 Vertical Acceleration @ Flare with Outliers [g] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.18 Vertical Acceleration @ Flare Clean [g] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.19 Bad Recording data example (missing data) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.20 Threshold Calculation Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.21 Unstable Localizer signal during landing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.22 Principal Components Standard Deviation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.23 Cumulative Proportion of Variance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.24 Biplot diagram all autoland dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
2.25 Biplot Graphic for 24 Highest Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.26 Biplot Graphic for 36 Lowest Components . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.1 SVM Principle - Binary Classication Hard Margins . . . . . . . . . . . 44

3.2 αi for sample vectors in input space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.3 SVM Principle - Binary Classication Soft Margins . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.4 Nonlinear Separable Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.1 SVM Model Creation and use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

4.2 Input Space - 2011 Autoland Flights Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.3 Input Space - 2011 Autoland Flights Comparison (zoom) . . . . . . . . 55
4.4 PCA Space - 2011 Autoland Flights Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
4.5 PCA Space - 2011 Autoland Flights Comparison (zoom) . . . . . . . . 56
4.6 Input Space - 2009 Autoland Flights Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.7 Input Space - 2009 Autoland Flights Comparison (zoom) . . . . . . . . 58
4.8 PCA Space - 2009 Autoland Flights Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.9 PCA Space - 2009 Autoland Flights Comparison (zoom) . . . . . . . . 58
B.1 Velocity Triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

B.2 Normal Acceleration at Touch-Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
B.3 Logitudinal Acceleration at Touch-Down . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
B.4 Other possible parameters for Touch-Down determination . . . . . . . . 74
B.5 Other parameters - detail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
B.6 VRTG Variation on Touch-Down (Origin = RALT TD Point) . . . . . 74
B.7 LONG Variation on Touch-Down (Origin = RALT TD Point) . . . . . 75
B.8 MLG Squat Switch (Origin = RALT TD Point) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
B.9 Radio and Baro Altitudes - Landing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
B.10 Vertical Speed - PFD Indication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
B.11 Baro-Inertial Vertical Velocity for a Landing in LPPT (RWY 03) . . . . 77
B.12 Baro-Inertial Vertical velocity (ALT_STD < 300 ft) . . . . . . . . . . . 78
B.13 Radio Altitude Rate (DMU Computed) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
B.14 Noise Reduction with F_NOISE() . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
B.15 Noise Reduction with Gaussian Smoothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
B.16 Comparison of the three smoothing methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
B.17 Three Possible Mesurements of Sink Rate at Touch-Down . . . . . . . . 81
B.18 Gaussian Smooth - Example with σ = 10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
B.21 Smoothing Methods Comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
B.22 Smoothing Comparison - TD area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
B.23 Flaps/Slats Lever . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
B.24 Airbus A320 Engine Throttle Levers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
B.25 Throttle Positions - Detents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
B.26 Threshold Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
B.27 Aircraft Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
E.1 Training and Testing Set Flights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

E.2 AUTOLAND File Conversions to LIBSVM Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
E.3 Data split into ν -fold subsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
E.4 Contour Plot - Default Values Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
E.5 Contour Plot - Best (C, γ) determined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
List of Tables
1.1 Parameters for dierent Fleets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.2 FDR Crash Survivable Test conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1 DH and RVR values for Autoland (European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) Legislation) 15
2.2 Autoland Gating Checks for A319 Fleet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.5 Autoland Gating Checks for A330 and A340 Fleets . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.6 Autoland Common Gating Checks for Airbus A320 family . . . . . . . 19
2.7 Autoland Keypoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.8 AGS File format - Keypoint data extraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.9 Autoland and Autoapproach Truth Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.10 Mnemomics used in Table 2.9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.11 PPF conditions distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.12 Airbus A320fam Published Pitch Limits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.13 Parameters Extracted by keypoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.14 keypoints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.15 Ground Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.16 Evaluation File Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.17 Biplot Graphic for the 354 Autoland detected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.1 2011 Autoland Flights Detection Methods Comparison . . . . . . . . . 57

4.2 2009 Autoland Flights Detection Methods Comparison . . . . . . . . . 59
A.1 General Data (Aircraft) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

A.2 General Data (Calculated) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
A.3 Key Point Flight Data - Ground Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
A.4 Key Point Flight Data - Air Sector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
B.1 Flaps/Slats Position Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
B.2 Angle to Position Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
B.3 Aircraft Dimensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
B.4 Quantities in Figs B.26 and B.27 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
B.5 Time calculations during landing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
E.1 Criteria to determine the SVM Training File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

E.2 Summary of Tests Performed to improve CV-Accuracy . . . . . . . . . 100
List of Acronyms
A320fam Airbus A320 aircraft family - A319/A320/A321

A429 ARINC 429 Data Transfer Protocol
A717 ARINC 717 Recording Protocol
AAPR Auto-Approach
A/C Aircraft
ACARS ARINC Communic. and Reporting System
ACMS Aircraft Condition and Monitoring System
ADC Air Data Computer
AGL Above Ground Level
AGS Analysis Ground Station
AIDS Aircraft Integrated Data System
AMM Aircraft Maintenance Manual
AP1 Autopilot #1
AP2 Autopilot #2
APMS Aviation Performance Measuring System
ARINC Aeronautical Radio Incorporated
ATA Air Transport Association
ATL Autoland
AWO All Weather Operation
BCD Binary Coded Decimal
BNR Binary
BSCU Brake Steering Control Unit
CAPT Captain
CDRW Compact Disk Rewritable
CLB Climb
CRZ Cruise
CSMU Crash Survivable Memory Unit
CSV Comma Separated Values
CVR Cockpit Voice Recorder
xi
DAR Digital Aircraft Integrated Data System Recorder
DES Descend
DFDR Digital Flight Data Recorder
DFDRS Digital Flight Data Recorder System
DH Decision Height
DMC Display Management Computer
DMU Data Management Unit
EASA European Aviation Safety Agency
ECAM Electronic Centralised Aircraft Monitoring
ECM Engine Condition Monitoring
ECU Engine Control Unit
EFIS Electronic Flight Instrument System
EHM Engine Health Monitoring
EIVMU Engine Interface Monitoring Unit
EMI Electro Magnetic Interference
EUROCAE European Organization for Civil Aviation Electronics
EWD Engine Warning Display
FAA Federal Aviation Administration
FAC Flight Augmentation Computer
FADEC Full Authority Digital Engine Controller
FCDC Flight Control Data Concentrator
FCOM Flight Crew Operations Manual
FDAU Flight Data Acquisition Unit
FDIMU Flight Data Interface and Management Unit
FDIU Flight Data Interface Unit
FDM Flight Data Monitoring
FDR Flight Data Recorder
FF Engine Fuel Flow
FGC Flight Guidance Computer
FLX Auto-Thrust FLEX Mode
FMA Flight Mode Annunciator
FMGC Flight Management and Guidance Comp
FO First Ocer
FOQA Flight Operations Quality Assurance
FPPU Feedback Position Pick-o Unit
FWC Flight Warning Computer
GA Go Around
xii
G/S Glide Slope
GND CTL PB Ground Control Push-Button
GPL General Public License
GPRS General Packet Radio Service
GRAF Ground Replay and Analysis Facility
GSM Groupe Spécial Mobile
ILS Instrument Landing System
IM Inner Marker
IRS Inertial Reference System
IVV Inertial Vertical Velocity
JAA Joint Aviation Authority
KTS Knot - Nautical Miles/Hour
LA Linear Accelerometer
LAND TRK LAND TRACK Autopilot Mode
LG Landing Gear
LH Left Hand
LO Lift O
LOC Localiser
LGCIU Landing Gear Control Interface Unit
LVP Low Visibility Procedure
LVTO Low Visibility Take-O
MCDU Multipurpose Control and Display Unit
MCT Maximum Continuous Thrust
MEL Minimum Equipment List
MLG Main Landing Gear
MM Middle Marker
MO Magneto-Optical
MOQA Maintenance Operations Quality Assurance
N1 Engine Low Rotor Speed Rotation
N2 Engine High Rotor Speed Rotation
NACA National Advisory Commitee for Aeronautics
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
ND Navigation Display
NLG Nose Landing Gear
OM Outer Marker
PB Push Button
PCA Principal Component Analysis
xiii
PFD Primary Flight Display
PI Poor Integrity
PPF Poor Performance
QAR Quick Access Recorder
RA Radio Altitude
RAs Radio Altimeters
RH Right Hand
RF Radio Frequency
RVR Runway Visual Range
RZ Return to Zero
SD System Display
SDI Source Destination Identier
SSCVR Solid State Cockpit Voice Recorder
SDAC System Data Acquisition Concentrator
SFCC Slat Flap Control Computer
SFIM Société de Fabrication d'Instruments de Mésure
SIM Subscriber Identity Module
SSFDR Solid State Flight Data Recorder
SSM Sign Status Matrix
SVM Support Vector Machine
SVMs Support Vector Machines
SVD Singular Value Decomposition
TAP Transportes Aéreos Portugueses
TD Touch Down
TDZ Touch Down Zone
TOGA Take-O / Go-Around
TR Thrust Reverse
TRK Track Angle
VMC Visual Meteorological Conditions
WPS Words Per Second
WQAR Wireless Quick Access Recorder
xiv
List of Symbols
fθ (θ) Multivariate Normal Density function

nP number of samples
Covariance Matrix
σxy Covariance between two variables
ρ Margin between canonical hyperplanes
L(w, b, α) Primal Lagrange Formulation
W (α) Dual Lagrange Formulation
αi Lagrange Multiplier
C Regularization Parameter
Rm Input Space Dimension
Rp Feature Space Dimension
Φ(xi ) Mapping function into feature space
K(xi , xj ) Kernel calculation for vectors xi and xj
xv
xvi
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Motivation
At the beginning of the development of commercial aviation, a small number of param-

eters was recorded in the mandatory recording systems, in which the recorder is known
as the Black Box. The purpose of this data is to support the investigation of serious
incidents or accidents, being the aviation authorities responsible for the readouts of
this data.
Nowadays commercial aircraft such as Airbus A320, A330 and A340 are equipped
with on-board recording systems able to register a huge amount of data, in the order
of thousand parameters. The evolution of on-board avionics systems allowed the incor-
poration of several recorders that are congured according to the needs of the airline.
It results on a large amount of data recorded and ready to be analysed. The value of
this data for the commercial airlines is that it enables the supervision of the operation
in areas such as Flight Operations, Maintenance (Aircraft Systems Monitoring) and
Performance Assessment.
Flight Data Analysis practices are based on the detection, verication and assess-
ment of pre-determined patterns. Appropriate Software is used to process this data
and to nd events such as Hard Landings or Over-Speeds among a signicant number
of known situations that can be problematic. The Flight Analysis Program allows
patterns to be identied and to build database with ights and events for safety and
performance analysis to be used mainly by the Flight Safety Departments from each
airline. It is of major importance to have this approach implemented within the air-
line, as the study of minor deviations to the operation or maintenance and its prompt
correction, may prevent serious incidents or accidents to happen.
Since the rst January 2005 it is mandatory by the aeronautic authorities that
an aircraft with a certied Take-O weight over 27 Tonnes must have a Flight Data
Analysis Program implemented.
During this work, dierent ways to approach the problem of determining the Normal
and Abnormal behaviour of the Autoland system are tested through the Flight Data
Analysis. The starting point are the bounds established by the Aircraft Manufacturer.
The exploration of algorithms to detect atypical or outlier values, allows the detection
of those situations in an automatic way out of the data-stream, reducing in this way
1
the workload of the operator.
This work represents also, an opportunity of cooperation between the industry and
the university, that was triggered by TAP's Portugal (TAP) interest to continuous
improve the monitoring of the Autoland Flight Data Analysis due to legal, performance
and safety reasons. It establishes some guiding directions for new approaches for the
analyses of all the landings in the future and in other Flight Phases as well.
Therefore, being TAP committed to the highest safety standards and practices in
the airline industry, it identied the opportunity to perform the assessment of its Au-
toland 1 ights. The aim is to improve TAP 's capabilities by studying new approaches
to the assessment of Autoland Flights. This corresponds also to the European legal
requirement, through EASA regulations, to perform the continuous monitoring for all
Autoland Flights (EU OPS 1.440)[1].
All the landings studied in this project are Autolands, i.e., automatically guided.
Even though there is no human interaction on the aircraft guidance, due to airline's
condentiality reasons, there is no identication of any individual ight in this project.
1.2 Aircraft Recording Systems

1.2.1 Flight Data Recorders
The recording of ight parameters started during WWII to evaluate operational loads
on military aircraft. This was achieved by National Advisory Commitee for Aeronautics
(NACA) with a device known as V-g recorder which provided both the peak values of
speed (V) and loads (g) during the ight.
During the 1950's this device was improved to record continuously and accommodate
the altitude recording, resulting in a trace recorder named as V-g-h recorder (where the
h stands altitude). It was in Australia around 1954, that Dr. David Warren produced
the rst recorder combining voice and data for the purposes of accident investigation
[2]. This device relied on magnetic recording media which became the paramount media
to store data till the 90's, both for voice and data. At this time two main techniques
were being used to record parameters. The photographic recorders and the metal foil
engraver recorders [3] [4]. These recorders had the same principle. Either a metal foil
was engraved with metallic stylus, or a photographic lm being impressed by lights in
the place of the stylus. There was a continuous movement of the foil. Being engraved
the metallic foil could be read almost directly, while the photographic foil had to be
revealed, exactly the same way as the photo cameras before the digital era.
One of the manufacturers of these type of recorders was SFIM (Société de Fabrication
d'Instruments de Mesure) 2 . In Figures 1.1 and 1.2 are presented both the recorder
and one sample of recordings from a SFIM photographic Recorder.
There was a mechanical limit to the number of parameters that could be recorded.
Normally just the parameters listed below were recorded.
1 Dened as automatic control of the aircraft during approach and landing

2 Today SAGEM Défense et Sécurité (SAFRAN Group)
2
Figure 1.1: SFIM - Photographic Recorder Figure 1.2: SFIM - Recorded Parameters
• Airspeed
• Heading
• Altitude
• Vertical acceleration (load factor)
• Time (with the unfold rotation of the tape)
These devices were used during the 60's and early 70's.
TAP was one of the rst airlines in the world to have a ight data analysis program
established starting with photographic recorders. In 1962 TAP started to introduce in
its eet the jet aircraft, with the Sud Aviation Caravelle VI-R, and kept track on this
transition with the photographic SFIM recorder (Figure 1.1).[5]
With the introduction of the magnetic tape, and the expansion of electronic indus-
tries, the recorders could improve the reliability and a larger number of parameters
could be stored. In Table 1.1, the number of parameters recorded on eets using these
new capabilities is presented.
Table 1.1: Parameters for dierent Fleets
Fleet Words per Second Nbr Recorded Parameters

Lockeed L1011 64 ∼180
Focker 100 64 ∼115
Boeing 767 64 ∼500
Airbus A310 128 ∼550
The Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) (Figure 1.3), commonly known as Black
Box or Crash Recorder as it is related normally in the news with serious accident
situations. In fact the goal of this recorder is to be used in such situations so that the
investigation authorities determine what caused the incident or accident.
Authorities required that the last 25 hour of ight data shall be recorded. The
assembly presented in Figure 1.4 and Figure 1.5 is a tape device capable to perform
the recording of the data continuously for the period required by the authorities. In
this way inside the DFDR there is always the last 25 ight hours.
3
Figure 1.3: Digital Flight Data Recorder - DFDR
Figure 1.4: DFDR - Crash Protected Tape Figure 1.5: DFDR - 25 H endless tape
DFDR recorders are crash-protected, the tape is protected inside a case (Figures
1.4 and 1.5), i.e., they are manufactured to survive harsh conditions. Tests of re
resistance, pressure stress and uid immersion3 are performed. The crash recorders
must comply with the specications from European Organization for Civil Aviation
Electronics (EUROCAE) document ED-112 [6]. It specify the conditions that a recorder
must cope without aecting the recorded data and its readability. These are resumed
in Table 1.2.
Table 1.2: FDR Crash Survivable Test conditions
Test Conditions
Impact Shock 3400G, 6.5 milliseconds
Penetration Resistance 500 lb. weight from 10 feet
Static Crush 5000 lbs., 5 minutes
High Temperature Fire 1100 ◦ C, 30 minutes
Low Temperature Fire 260 ◦ C, 10 hours
Deep Sea Pressure 20,000 feet, 30 days
Fluids Immersion Min 48H per ED-112 1
In the 90's a new development on the Flight Recorder was produced with the incor-
poration of solid state memories for the recording instead of the magnetic tape. The
same crash protection standards as in Tab 1.2 apply to this electronic equipment and it
was renamed to Solid State Flight Data Recorder (SSFDR) after its technology. In this
recorder, the solid state memories are embeded into several protection layers (Fig 1.6).
This part of the Solid State Flight Data Recorder (SSFDR) is named Crash Surviv-
3 Fluids that are normally encountered are: - Jet Fuel , - Engine Oil, - Hydraulic Fluid
4
able Memory Unit (CSMU). This new manufacturing, avoided the mechanical moving
parts of the tape recorders. The wear parts are replaced by memories increasing the
reliability of the recorder and producing a much easier maintenance. Two models of
SSFDRs are presented on Fig 1.7
Figure 1.6: CSMU - Crash Survivable Memory Unit
In most aircraft and also on Airbus eets both SSFDR and Solid State Cockpit
Voice Recorder (SSCVR) are installed on tail cone on the back of the aircraft (Figure
1.8). To simplify the notation all the types of crash protected ight data recorders will
be designated as Flight Data Recorder (FDR) in the remaining of this document.
Figure 1.7: Two models of SSFDR Figure 1.8: SSCVR(bottom) and SSFDR(top)
Aircraft Installation
1.2.2 Acquisition Units and Non-Crash Recorders

In parallel with the crash-recorder presented in section 1.2.1 there is the Quick Access
Recorder (QAR) (Fig 1.9), which allows the airline to have access to the same data as
in DFDR, but with the advantage of being in a suitable location in the aircraft where
the data can be easily collected in a systematic way.
The architecture presented in Fig 1.9 is specic to Airbus aircraft, and represents the
mandatory part of data recording. The computer that is in the center of this system
is the Flight Data Interface and Management Unit (FDIMU), which is the result of
the merging of two separated units from previous generation aircraft, the Flight Data
Interface Unit (FDIU) and the Data Management Unit (DMU). The mandatory data
5
Figure 1.9: FDIMU Mandatory
concerns the FDIU part of the FDIMU.

This computer is an acquisition unit which receives information on Arinc 429 [7] data
buses as inputs. A number of dierent sources provide information to be recorded,
such as the Display Management Computer (DMC) for data presented on aircraft's
instrumentation in the cockpit, the Flight Warning Computer (FWC) to record the
dierent warnings, the Flight Control Data Concentrator (FCDC) that has information
on the ying surfaces or the Brake Steering Control Unit (BSCU) which provides
information on Brakes and Steering of the aircraft, just as examples of the whole set of
data collected. These computers have their specic function inside each system they
belong, as controllers or data providers, and in parallel send information to be recorded.
The FDIMU packages the data into Arinc 573/717 [8] words and outputs them to be
recorded both on QAR and DFDR. The transmission of the data is dierent for each
of these recorders. For the DFDR there is a bidirectional bus (Fig 1.9) and for the
QAR it is unidirectional. The DFDR plays back its recordings to the FDIMU so that
verication and synchronization of the data is accomplished. In the case of the QAR
there is no playback and the protections against recording errors are done inside the
recorder. Inside this recorder the data is sent to buer memories before if is recorded
in a physical media and this data is erased from the buer after comparing the its
contents with the recorded values.
Normally the QAR is located in the avionics bay, in some eets it can be even in the
cockpit, in opposition to the FDR which is installed on the tail cone where the access
is dicult (Fig 1.8). In this way, when there is a physical media such as a Tape or a
Magneto-Optical (MO) disk (Figs 1.13 and 1.11), it is up to the maintenance team from
the airline to pick up the media and send it to analysis on the Flight Data Analysis
Ground Station (vd Section 1.3). The QAR is not crash protected, it is not intended
to survive the limit conditions in Table 1.2 as the DFDR. Its goal is to feed the airline
with the data to perform its daily analyses. A further extension of this concept will be
presented with the Digital Aircraft Integrated Data System Recorder (DAR) recorder
later in this section. The QAR technology evolved from dierent solutions as in the
case of the DFDR. Two models of this recorder are presented in Figures 1.10 and 1.12
each one with its corresponding recording media.
The media was originated on the computer industry, being the tapes the same as
6
Figure 1.10: Tape Recorder Figure 1.11: Tape for Flight Data Recording
Figure 1.12: Magneto-Optical Disk Recorder Figure 1.13: Magneto-Optical Disk
used for computer backups in late 70's and 80's and the MO disk the same technology
as Compact Disk Rewritable (CDRW).
There is a major drawback on the use of this type of media, which is the logistics
associated with its handling. There is a large number of media that has to be collected
on aircraft and transported with strong human intervention. Again the technology
used nowadays in cellular communications could provide a solution to this problem [9]
(Fig 1.14). In fact, the state-of-the-art for non-crash recorders is the Wireless Quick
Access Recorder (WQAR) makes use of commercial cellular phone networks for data
transmission.
In Fig 1.15 a typical network layout is presented. The WQAR is equipped with a
maximum of eight cellular radios, each one with its own Subscriber Identity Module
(SIM) card installed. For TAP conguration an intermediate solution of four cellular
radios is in place.
Transmission takes place only on ground when the local cellular phone operator
with which TAP has the contract for mobile communications is available and two
extra conditions are met. The rst is one signal from the Landing Gear indicating the
ground condition, and the second is one signal indicating that one of the passenger
doors is open.
7
Figure 1.14: Wireless QAR
The fact that the transmission occurs normally with the local cellular operator
prevents the costs to become high. If an incident occurs abroad, there is the option to
perform a download-on-demand. In TAP facilities (Figure 1.15), in order to activate
a remote download, the Ground Station establishes a cell phone call with one of the
numbers from the SIM cards installed on the WQAR and sends one SMS message. If
the recorder is properly congured and there is GSM/GPRS network available where
the aircraft stands, the data will be transmitted from the remote cellular provider
(roaming option). In this way there is no need to attend the physical media to perform
an incident analysis.
The same rules for passenger's electronic equipment apply to the cellular radios on
the WQAR and thus these phones are disabled in ight, therefore there is no electro-
magnetic interference with the remaining equipment on the avionics bay.
Figure 1.15: Network Layout for WQAR Transmission
The second part of the FDIMU was formerly known as DMU on older generations
of Airbus aircraft. This part deals with Non-Mandatory data and this system is named
as Aircraft Integrated Data System (AIDS) on A320 eets and Aircraft Condition and
Monitoring System (ACMS) on A330 / A340 (Fig 1.16).
For the Non-Mandatory system the FDIMU acts in the same way as for the Manda-
tory (Fig 1.9) in the sense that is collects data from a set of Arinc 429 buses from
dierent systems in the aircraft, and packages the data into Arinc 573/717 words to be
8
Figure 1.16: FDIMU Non-Mandatory
stored on a recorder named DAR. In this conguration the FDIMU can be customised,
i.e., the airline chooses the parameters that needs to be recorded in order to match
its dierent analyses. In this way, the use of the DAR has the advantage of extending
the amount of data available on the Mandatory part, provided the acquisition unit is
programmed to this eect.
Besides the customization of the acquisition unit, the Non-Mandatory system also
produces Reports that can be generated during ight, and accessed at this time or later
on ground.
The recorder itself (physical equipment) is the same as the QAR presented in Figures
1.10, 1.12 and 1.14. It is the connection position inside the avionics bay, that denes
whether this equipment is installed as a QAR or a DAR. Depending on the position
installed the contents of the recordings are dierent.
1.2.3 Flight Data Recording Process

The recording process on one aircraft in normally performed according to the block
diagram presented in Fig 1.17. The eets that are focussed on this work (Airbus),
have a signicant amount of computers in each system acting as controllers and data
providers. The Air conditioning (ATA 21), Engines (ATA 73), Navigation (ATA 34),
Auto ight (ATA 22), Flight Controls (ATA 27) are just some examples. These systems
are represented in Fig 1.17 as the block "Aircraft Sensors". Inside each system there is
a set of sensors that perform the conversion of physical quantities such as temperature,
pressure, uid quantities, shaft rotation speeds, aircraft speed, etc, for self use of the
system and/or to be transmitted.
Figure 1.17: Flight Data Signal Acquisition
The acquisition block of Fig 1.17 normally receives information on Arinc 429 stan-
9
dard containing the information that can be formatted in Arinc 573/717 words and
recorded. The computers or avionic units that perform this task can have dierent
designations depending on its function (Mandatory/Non-Mandatory) or manufacturer,
the most known in the industry are:
• FDAU -Flight Data Acquisition Unit
• FDIMU - Flight Data Interface Monitoring Unit
• FDIU - Flight Data Interface Unit
• DMU - Data Management Unit
The designation Flight Data Acquisition Unit (FDAU) is normally the name for
acquisition units in Boeing eet. It is one equipment that deals with both the Manda-
tory and Non-Mandatory parts, having internally electronic boards dedicated to each
of these functions. The FDIMU, FDIU and DMU are designations from Airbus air-
craft, and its functioning was addressed in Sections 1.2.1 and 1.2.2. In short FDIU
and DMU are dedicated separately to Mandatory and Non-Mandatory data respec-
tively. These are avionic data acquisition computers from older generation aircraft.
The newest merge the two computers into a single one named FDIMU.
The full description of the transmission protocol Arinc 429 and the ight data record-
ing protocol Arinc 573/717 can be found in references [7] and [8].
1.3 Flight Data Analysis Software - AGS (Analysis Ground

Station)
AGS is a program dedicated to Flight Data Analysis. It is a commercial product from
SAGEM Défense et Sécurité (SAFRAN Group). Fig 1.18 gives one description of the
capabilities of this analysis program. The goal is to convert raw data from ARINC 717
recording protocol into aircraft parameters in engineering units. These parameters are
used by AGS executes a set of procedures to generate the ight data analysis.
Fig 1.18 gives a full description of the existing media in the industry to support the
recorded data. As referred in Section 1.2 the current trend is to have all the aircraft
equipped with WQAR.
AGS is a modular system, i.e., there are software procedures dedicated to the de-
tection of exceedances both for Flight Operations or for Maintenance. The program
separates the procedures, into Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA) and Main-
tenance Operations Quality Assurance (MOQA).
Procedures inside AGS are calculated at rates from 1Hz to 32Hz. Normally it goes
along the maximum parameter recording rate according to ARINC 717 protocol. In
DAR data, it is not common to have data recorded at rates greater than 8Hz. In fact
from tables of Appendix A, one can see that the maximum rate for a parameter is 8Hz
for the vertical acceleration (VRTG).
10
Figure 1.18: AGS Conception (From Analysis Ground Station V12 Users Manual [10])
1.4 Previous Work and Thesis Scope

The Autoland analysis performs a comparison of specic parameters with the aircraft
manufacturer nominal data that describe the normal performance of the autoland sys-
tem.
Before 2005, TAP ground station was based on a program named GRAF, from Flight
Data Company. This program was running on a VAX/VMS computer with FOQA and
MOQA capabilities, but without the level of customization and programming there is
today with AGS, of which this thesis is a good example.
For an Autoland analysis to be established, the Aircraft manufacturer executes a
certain amount of automatic landings and produces the statistics of the normal val-
ues that the operator shall use as guidelines. This method for autoland analysis was
implemented on former eets from TAP, such as Lockeed L1011 and A310 [11], and
current eets such as Airbus A320, A330 and A340 [12],[13] and [14]. These methods
are referred in Figure 1.19 as Standard Procedures and represent the starting point for
the work developed in this thesis. Here, the concepts of Poor Performance (PPF) and
Poor Integrity (PI) are the classication criteria for Autoland ights (Section 2.1).
This classication is to be compared with new methods that aim to detect abnor-
11
mal values from ights that are not detected with the Standard Procedure. The rst
approach to this problem is described in Section 2.6 corresponding to the Histogram
Evaluation of the data. It is a statistical study to determine which parameter values
are deemed to be considered as atypical or outliers.
In a perspective of implementing new methodologies and future developments, spe-
cially creating one automatic classication, new concepts for data mining will be applied
to the training set derived from the Histogram Evaluation.
During the search phase for new solutions it was found that the newest developments
with Flight Data classication are performed with Support Vector Machines (SVM).
The work from NASA in reference [15] is one of the most developed work in this area
(up to the author's knowledge). Other references ([16], [17], [18], [19]) explore the
SVMs capabilities to nd atypical cases within a set of new vectors from which there
is no previous knowledge from its normal or abnormal state. This approach is to be
fully described in Chapter 3.
The objectives to be achieved with this thesis are resumed in Fig 1.19.
Figure 1.19: Guidelines for Work Development
1.5 Thesis Organization

This thesis is organized into 5 Chapters and 5 Appendices each one with the following
contents:
• In Chapter 1, there is a description of the planned work to be done, it presents

the starting point and the motivation that allowed this work to happen. A pre-
12
sentation of technology and protocols existing in the industry and a brief history
of Flight Recording.
• Chapter 2 presents the Autoland and its classications, starting with the criteria
provided by the aircraft manufacturer. It focus the creation of a training set by
the labelling of atypical data with the criteria studied. The multivariate analysis
of the data is introduced with the Principal Component Analysis (PCA).
• Chapter 3 concerns Kernel Methods and Support Vector Machines. In this chapter
it is studied the use of learning machines to detect abnormal or atypical patterns
on the Autoland Flight Data. Problem formulations conducting to optimization
problems with restrictions conduct to minimum and maximum function calcula-
tions using Lagrangean Multipliers.
• Chapter 4 presents the results and the comparison of the methods presented in the
previous Chapters. The testing of novelty data is performed with these methods.
• Chapter 5 contains the presentation of the conclusions obtained from the results
in Chapter 4. Guiding to future developments and nal considerations.
• Appendix A there is a full description of the ight data used in this project, for
A320 family of aircraft.
• Appendix B describes key procedures in AGS that had to be studied and pro-
grammed in order to have feasible data for the Autoland. These are general
procedures and considerations that are used on any analysis.
• Appendix C - Vol II is the complete listing of the Autoland procedure in AGS
developed during this project.
• Appendix D - Vol II. Description of C support programs and script les that are
necessary to the implementation of this project.
• Appendix E - Vol II. Full details of LIBSVM package with application to model
construction with Autoland data.
13
Chapter 2
Autoland Analysis
The Autoland is the automatic control of the aircraft during approach and landing.
Normally it is done in low visibility conditions and pilots see the runway lights just
a few seconds before the landing occurs[20]. This operation is considered a highly
safe manoeuvre due to the automatic control systems present in avionics equipments
dedicated to the Autoight systems. But for those landings to happen, there are strict
requirements imposed by the authorities on aircraft equipment, on aireld equipment
and special crew qualication that pilots must attain.
In this work, the dierent studies for Autoland assessment, aim to have a robust
characterization of real abnormal cases. This concept is established rst, by the limits
provided by the aircraft manufacturer, and then some new approaches to the problem
with dierent algorithms are studied.
The Autoland is part of a broader concept described as the All Weather Operation
(AWO), which allows one airline to operate in extreme low visibility conditions. This
has strong economical impact in the airline operation, allowing the schedules to be
kept during the whole year and avoiding alternate airports, extra transportation and
hotel expenses.
The Approach and Landing ight phases considered in this work make use of the
Autoight system. During the descend and in order to follow the path reference pre-
cisely, two autopilots are needed together with the Instrument Landing System (ILS)
(Section B.7). In some cases it is enough that a certain automatic guidance is done, till
the point where the necessary visibility of the runway is achieved. In this situation the
pilot can disconnect the autopilots and proceed manually with the rest of the approach
and landing. There is not a full use of the autopilots till landing, and this is considered
one Autoapproach.
There are three categories for an Autoland, known as CAT I, CAT II and CAT
III which are determined by the ceiling of the clouds and the visibility conditions of
the day. The ceiling and visibility are indicated by two quantities which are, Decision
Height (DH) and Runway Visual Range (RVR).
According to EASA legislation, the denition of DH is:
Decision Height is the wheel height above the runway elevation by which a Go-Around
must be initiated unless adequate visual reference has been established and the aircraft
position and approach path have been assessed as satisfactory to continue the approach
14
and land safely.
The RVR is the visibility distance in the horizontal on the runway.
The respective values of these quantities for each category are presented in Table
2.1.
Table 2.1: DH and RVR values for Autoland (EASA Legislation)
Category DH RVR
CAT I 200 ft 550 m
CAT II 100 ft 300 m
CAT IIIA 50 ≤ DH < 100 RVR ≥ 200 m
CAT IIIB 0 ≤ DH < 50 RVR ≥ 75 m
CAT IIIC No DH No RVR
It is important to note that the RVR is the visibility on the runway. The visibility
during the descend when autoland is being performed is normally zero, i.e., the landing
is performed inside clouds, which makes this kind of operation extremely dependent
on the technology both on aircraft and on ground. This is also the main reason for
autoland ights to be closely monitored with the ight data.
2.1 The Autoland Monitoring

All operators authorized for CAT II and CAT III operations must monitor the be-
haviour of the Autolands, and make a continuous assessment of these ights. This is a
legal mandatory request by EASA [1].
Figure 2.1: Flight Data Stages
In order to explore the data and develop tools that allows the operator to moni-
tor the Autolands performance and detect any system misbehaviour all autolands and
Autoapproaches will be subjected to dierent algorithms conducting either to classi-
cation during the AGS ight processing, or later, through the extraction of a File with
Flight Data for analysis with other tools.
The Flight Data used to produce this le, and on dierent analysis on this project,
is completely described in Appendix A. Once this le is available with ight data,
it can be evaluated using the Standard Procedures classication methods, followed by
other concepts involving Statitical and Data-Mining techniques aimed to improve the
detection of abnormal Autolands. It must be emphasized that this task is performed
manually and this work aims to automatize it.
In Fig. 2.1 there is a summary of this process. The data starts to be recorded
on-board, which is known as Raw Data. AGS processing produces a classication and
15
exports the ight data le to be used on atypical or novelty detection algorithms. All
the steps are concern of this project, specially assuring that each one feeds the necessary
information for the next step.
2.2 Standard Procedure

The Standard Procedure methodology relies on the identication of any warnings hap-
pening during descent and on the evaluation of relevant parameters at certain key-
points. These lead to the Poor Integrity and Poor Performance concepts here pre-
sented.
This is the kind of analysis performed in TAP's former Ground station, described
in Section 1.4, which is reproduced in AGS and is the basis for the Autoland analysis.
2.2.1 Poor Integrity (PI)

The autoight system computes its maximum available category, CAT I, CAT II or
CAT III, depending on the systems and functions available and displays this informa-
tion in the top part of the Primary Flight Display (PFD) (Fig 2.2) in one area of this
display known as Flight Mode Annunciator (FMA) (Fig 2.3).
Figure 2.2: Primary Flight Display - A320fam
Figure 2.3: Flight Mode Annunciator (Top of PFD)- A320fam
The FMA displays to the pilot, the autoight and autothrust modes. From left to
right of Fig 2.3, each column represents respectively:
• Autothrust Modes
16
• Autoight Vertical Modes
• Autoight Lateral Modes
• Approach Capabilities
• Autoight Status
It is precisely in the fourth column (Approach Capabilities), that the capability is

displayed with one of the following indications:
• CAT III Dual

• CAT III Single
• CAT II
• CAT I
This listing has a decreasing order per amount of systems available. Having its max-
imum capability the aircraft can perform a CAT III Dual, which means no limitation is
present and both autopilots are engaged. If just one autopilot was engaged the indica-
tion CAT III Single was present but there was no limitation on approach and landing
capability, as the autopilot in charge can cope with the functions by itself. As there
are more system degradation on the aircraft, the indications become CAT II in a rst
step and nally CAT I. Each of these degradation steps produces a triple click aural
warning issued in the cockpit and this advise has the correspondence on the activation
of a bit on the information provided by the Autoight system. These bits are part of
the signals that will classify the Autoland as Poor Integrity (Fig 2.4).
Figure 2.4: Poor Integrity Decision
The L3FO_INOP means that CAT III Dual is inoperative and the meanings are
similar to L3FP_INOP and L2_INOP for CAT III Single and CAT II respectively.
These bits are fully described in Table A.3.
Other than the system degradation, Poor Integrity identies whether there was any
warning during the landing. This information is provided by the remaining signals
present in Fig 2.4. AUTOLAND_ON is a signal that indicates when there is a fault
condition during the autoland, this includes the disengagement of one autopilot. The
17
rest of the signals are Master Warning (MW) and Master Caution (MC) warnings,
and correspond to red warnings (the most limitative faults) and amber warnings (less
limitative faults) being displayed in the front panel of each pilot (known as glareshield
panel).
During the descend, the autoland capability warnings, master warning and master
caution are checked for any activation. Together with the autopilot disengagement
logic, if any signal is triggered, it produces a classication of PI on the autoland. This
corresponds to the OR logic presented in Fig 2.4.
2.2.2 Poor Performance (PPF)

The autoland is classied as PPF, if the values of the parameters dened in Tables
2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 fall outside the limits (known as gating checks) provided by the
aircraft manufacturer.
Table 2.2: Autoland Gating Checks for A319 Fleet
Decription Medium Value Standard Deviation
Rate of Descend @ 100ft (RALT) -11.2 ft/sec 1.4 ft/sec
Rate of Descend @ 30ft (RALT) -11.1 ft/sec 1.6 ft/sec
Rate of Descend @ TD -3 ft/sec 1.2 ft/sec
ROLL angle @ TD 0.2 deg 1.4 deg
PITCH angle @ TD 6.1 deg 1.4 deg

Decription Minimum Value Maximum Value
Rate of Descend @ TD -4 ft/sec 0 ft/sec
Maximum Pitch from 50ft (RALT) to TD+4sec 3 deg 7 deg
ROLL angle @ TD -5 deg 5 deg
Time from RALT=50ft to TD 6 sec 11 sec
LOC Deviation @ TD + 15 sec -12 mDDM 12 mDDM

Rate of Descend @ 100ft (RALT) -19.3 ft/sec -4.8 ft/sec
Rate of Descend @ 30ft (RALT) -16.5 ft/sec -5.4 ft/sec
Rate of Descend @ TD -9.4 ft/sec 0 ft/sec
ROLL angle @ TD -4.7 deg 4.7 deg
LOC Deviation @ TD -12.7 µA 12.7 µA
Time from RALT=50ft to TD 4.5 sec 9.5 sec
The Tables 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 are the checks that each eet shall meet, in order not
to be classied as Poor Performance Autoland. The fact that they have been provided
by the manufacturer on dierent dates the criteria is not a uniform one. It varies, even
within the same aircraft family (A319, A320 and A321). On an experimental basis and
in the context of this project, a uniform table shall be derived out of the tables above.
Any other conditions provided by the manufacturer can be programmed in the same
way as these that are being used for the sake of uniformity.
18
Table 2.5: Autoland Gating Checks for A330 and A340 Fleets
Rate of Descend @ 100ft (RALT) -19 ft/sec -6.5 ft/sec
Rate of Descend @ 50ft (RALT) + 3 sec -15 ft/sec -4.5 ft/sec
Rate of Descend @ TD -7.5 ft/sec 0 ft/sec
ROLL angle @ TD -4 deg 4 deg
PITCH angle @ TD 1 deg 10 deg
Time from RALT=50ft to TD 4 sec 11 sec
GS Deviation @ 100ft (RALT) -87.5 mDDM 87.5 mDDM
LOC Deviation @ TD -9.5 mDDM 9.5 mDDM
Cross Wind 0 kts 15 kts
Tail Wind 0 kts 10 kts
Head Wind 0 kts 30 kts
The resulting Table is dened in 2.6.

Table 2.6: Autoland Common Gating Checks for Airbus A320 family
Condition Decription Minimum Value Maximum Value
PPF1 Maximum Pitch During Landing 8 deg
PPF2 Rate of Descend @ 100ft (RALT) -19.3 ft/sec -4.8 ft/sec
PPF3 Rate of Descend @ 30ft (RALT) -16.5 ft/sec -5.4 ft/sec
PPF4 Rate of Descend @ TD -9.4 ft/sec 0 ft/sec
PPF5 ROLL angle @ TD -4.7 deg 4.7 deg
PPF6 PITCH angle @ TD 0.9 deg 6.5 deg
PPF7 LOC Deviation @ TD Sys#1 -12 mDDM 12 mDDM
PPF8 LOC Deviation @ TD Sys#2 -12 mDDM 12 mDDM
PPF9 Time from RALT=50ft to TD 4.5 sec 9.5 sec
Each condition is identied with a label PPFn, with n representing one of the
Poor Performance conditions. Any value out of the minimum and maximum limits
from Table 2.6 produces one PPF condition producing an overall classication of Poor
Performance.
2.3 Key Point Data Extraction

The PPF classication presented in the previous section, already relies on gating con-
ditions applied to certain keypoints (as 100ft, 30ft and TD). There are though a very
limited number of keypoints considering the amount of data available and potentially
extracted. The rst move to extend the Standard Analysis is to create a set of keypoints
that are relevant in the Landing ight phase. These are presented in Table 2.7, and
Figs 2.5 and 2.6. These were chosen relying on the information from former Autoland
analysis documented on references [12], [13] and [14].
The second step was to identify the relevant data that should be extracted on each
keypoint. All the considerations about the data are addressed next in this section. This
approach leads to the programming of the AGS Autoland Procedure from Appendix
C, which produces an Autoland le containing the information from the keypoints in a
format that is ready for further testing and exploration of new solutions for Autoland
classication.
The data used for extraction is fully documented in Appendix A, and it is divided
19
Table 2.7: Autoland Keypoints
KEYPOINTS
Criteria Value Description
100ft 100ft Radio Altitude
Flight Path Related
TD Touch Down Point
LNDTK Land Track Mode (≈ 400ft RA)
FLARE Flare Mode initiation
Autoland Related
ALIGN Align Mode initiation
ROLOUT Rollout Mode initiation
Other Criteria TH Threshold Crossing (Section B.6)
Figure 2.5: Keypoints - Autoland Modes + Threshold + Touch Down
Figure 2.6: Keypoints - Flight Path
in three main areas, which are:
• General Data
• Air Sector Data
• Ground Sector Data
Each of these components of the data is described next.
2.3.1 General Data

The General Data is dened as the data that can be extracted just once for the whole
ight such as Tail-Number, Aircraft Type or Flight Number. This information does
not change during a ight. Some additional calculations that will add information to
20
Air Sector and Ground Sector are considered as General data. The parameters that
may be relevant on both sectors are also considered in this section. As an example, jet
engine related parameters are N1 (fan rotating speed), N2 (core rotating speed), Fuel
Flow and Vibrations. The full description of the parameters is on Tables A.1 and A.2.
2.3.2 Air Sector Data

While the Aircraft is airborne and before the Touch Down (TD) point is reached, the
relevant data to extract or analyse in this situation is dened in Table A.4. In this
context parameters like Radio Altitude, Flaps Settings or Pitch and Roll angles are
examples of data that have meaning when the airborne condition is present.
2.3.3 Ground Sector Data

The Ground Sector parameters are those that are relevant just after TD point is de-
tected, which are typically parameters like Brakes, Thrust Reverse use or wheel speeds.
A full description of the parameters taken into account on this context is on Table A.3.
2.3.4 AGS Procedure Output

Keeping in mind the way Software Procedures are implemented in AGS as described in
Section 1.3, the procedure for Autoland Analysis to detect keypoints and extract data,
is implemented at a rate of 8Hz to go along the maximum parameter rate (VRTG).
The software developed in AGS is listed in Appendix C. It generates the primary
source of data for the studies present in this project. It implements the Standard
Procedure with the bounds dened by the aircraft manufacturer, that leads to the
concepts of PPF and PI (Section 2.4). It is also this procedure that produces the
output of a le containing the relevant information from each keypoint that is of great
importance for the Autoland evaluation and classication that is to be developed in
this and the next sections. This le is a Comma Separated Values (CSV) le, with the
format detailed in Table 2.8.
Table 2.8: AGS File format - Keypoint data extraction
AGS Autoland File Format

ACTAIL AC_TYPE FLTNUM ORIGIN RUNWAY_TO DESTINATION
RUNWAY_LD DATE_TO HEIGHTD VAPR
Block to repeat @ LT->100->50->30->FL->AL->TH->TD (xx)
ROD_xx ROLL_xx LOC1_xx LOC2_xx GS1_xx GS2_xx
HDG_xx PITCH_xx IAS_xx ALT_xx TLA1_xx TLA2_xx
N11_xx N12_xx N21_xx N22_xx FF1_xx FF2_xx
VRTG_xx LONG_xx LATG_xx FPA_xx FPAC_xx HEADWIN_xx
TAILWIN_xx CROSWIN_xx DRIFT_xx CONF_xx RA_xx
Final calculations
DELTAT_LT DELTAT_100 DELTAT_50 DELTAT_30 DELTAT_FL DELTAT_AL
DELTAT_TH DELTAT_LG cat2 cat3_fp cat3_fo locmax
AP1LT AP2LT AP1TD AP2TD LAND_DIST TR
TRN THR_COUNT bp1max bp2max bp3max bp4max
POOR_INTEG POOR_PERF FLAG_GA DATE_CURR
The le description (Table 2.8) indicates that it is composed by three data sets. The
rst is the identication of the ight, which is not used in this project to keep every
21
ight unidentied, the second is the snapshot data from each keypoint (Figures 2.5
and 2.6), which is repeated in each keypoint. The third is composed by General Data.
With such data structure, each landing is described by a set of 270 values.
2.4 Autoland and Autoapproach Decision Logics

The AGS software procedure implements several tasks. It performs the data extraction
on each keypoint, implements the logics for either Autoland or Autoapproach decision
and its subsequent classication according to the Standard Procedure. As noticed be-
fore, this part of the project is of major importance, as the nal goal is to have a real
number of abnormal cases that are provided to the analyst in an automatic way.
The Autolands or Autoapproach ights happen depending on the meteorological
conditions on the operated airports. The remaining are manual landings with visibility
conditions, which is known in aviation industry as Visual Meteorological Conditions
(VMC). There is obviously not a prior knowledge of which ights will be Autolands
or Autoapproaches, and it is through the ight data analysis of all the ights from
operation that these ights will be detected and classied. The logics for this analysis
is described next.
Figure 2.7: Autoland and Autoapproach Logics with Standard Classication
Figure 2.7 decribes how the AGS Procedure separates the Autoland from the Au-
toapproach and the implementation of the Standard Procedure to each of the deter-
22
minations. The procedure scans the landings on a 8Hz rate, and a rst decision is
whether there was a Full Autoplilot Use during all the descend. This logic will be fully
described in Section 2.4.1.
After this rst assessment the concepts of Poor-Performance (PPF) and Poor In-
tegrity (PI) introduced in Sections 2.2.2 and 2.2.1 are applied. A deviation from the
limits established by the aircraft manufacturer, indicates a degradation of the perfor-
mance of the Autoland, and these are subjected to individual analysis.
In the case of Autoapproaches presented in Fig 2.7, there is not the classication of
Poor Integrity, due to the fact that by denition of Autoapproaches, the autopilot is
disengaged by the pilot. In this way at least one signal is always present enabling the
OR in Fig 2.4. Therefore, all the Autoapproaches would be classied as PI, and no
valued added information would come out of this classication.
2.4.1 Logics for Flight Type Determination

The Autoland or Autoapproach will be dened based on the Autopilot Engaged pa-
rameters and its value both on Land Track AP Mode (LAND TRK ≈ 400ft AGL) and
Touch Down (TD) (Fig 2.5).
The engagement of LAND TRK autopilot mode is explained in Section B.7. The
general idea, is that when one or both Autopilots are engaged and the LAND TRK
mode is engaged, it is expected that either an autoland or an Autoapproach will happen.
There is no other way around, due to the fact that this mode is the merging of Localiser
and Glide-Slope autopilot tracking modes. This indicates one automatic setting for
landing the aircraft. However, there is the possibility that an autopilot (or both) are not
engaged when Touch-Down happens, this means that they have been disconnected after
the LAND TRK, either manually or disengaged due to abnormal aircraft conditions. It
is in this situations that the Autoplilot Full Use is checked, and separates the Autolands
from the Autoapproaches.
In this logic, care should be taken, NOT to consider:
• Autoland Engagement After LAND TRK

• Number of the Autopilot Engaged swaps between LANK TRK and TD
These two items are highly improbable, and only spurious signals can produce this
indication. Due to this reason these situations will be considered as invalid.
The logic for the determination of the conditions above are presented on Table 2.9.
The mnemonics used in Table 2.9, are presented in the next Table 2.10.
Each truth functions on Table 2.9 can be simplied with the help of the Karnaugh
maps [21] yelding:
The Autoapproach logics (AAPR ) indicate that there was a disconnection of the
autopilots after LAND TRK (below 400ft AGL). This could be a voluntary action from
the pilot, to proceed with the rest of the landing manually or an instability condition
that caused the autopilots to disconnect. In the second situation, either the landing
is continued manually, or a Go-Around is performed. This means that the landing is
23
Table 2.9: Autoland and Autoapproach Truth Table
AP1@LT AP2@LT AP1@TD AP2@TD ATL AAPR INVALID

A B C D e f g
0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 0 0 1
0 0 1 0 0 0 1
0 0 1 1 0 0 1
0 1 0 0 0 1 0
0 1 0 1 1 0 0
0 1 1 0 0 0 1
0 1 1 1 0 0 1
1 0 0 0 0 1 0
1 0 0 1 0 0 1
1 0 1 0 1 0 0
1 0 1 1 0 0 1
1 1 0 0 0 1 0
1 1 0 1 1 0 0
1 1 1 0 1 0 0
1 1 1 1 1 0 0
Table 2.10: Mnemomics used in Table 2.9
Mnemonic Description
AP1@LT Autopilot #1 Engaged at LAND TRK
AP2@LT Autopilot #2 Engaged at LAND TRK
AP1@TD Autopilot #1 Engaged at Touch-Down
AP2@TD Autopilot #2 Engaged at Touch-Down
ATL Autoland
AAPR Auto Approach
INVALID
Figure 2.8: Karnaugh Map for Autoland Decoding
discontinued in a perfectly safe way, and a second approach will be performed for the
landing to be nished. There is a ag in the output le (Table 2.8) indicating that a
go-around occurred (FLAG_GA).
If none of the logics ATL, AAPR or INVALID is triggered according to the logics
above, we are in the presence of a Manual Landing, i.e., the autopilots are not connected
on the test points, as a consequence the autoland modes did not appear, and the landing
was conducted manually. This is the majority of the ights in the operation. Despite
these ights are beyond the scope of this project, the AGS procedure (Appendix C)
24
Figure 2.9: Karnaugh Map for Autoapproach Decoding
Figure 2.10: Karnaugh Map for Invalid Decoding
also exports one le with the contents of the ight path keypoints presented in Fig 2.6,
which are the ones not depending on the autoland modes. This le is kept for future
developments for manual landing analysis.
The invalid condition present in Table 2.9 also leads to the creation of a le if the
conditions are met. There should never appear one entry in this le as it corresponds
to the autopilot engagement below 400 ft AGL or the swap of the autopilot engaged.
As there are recording errors, one of this condition may appear due to this fact and
the le created pinpoints the ights where this happens.
In short, the AGS autoland procedure described in Appendix C provides four Comma
Separated Value (CSV) les named:
• AUTOLAND_[eet].CSV
• AUTO_APPROACH_[eet].CSV
• REGULAR_LAND_[eet].CSV
• INVALID_[eet].CSV
25
following the logic described in this Section and the format from Table 2.8.
2.5 Autoland Evaluation with Standard Procedure (PPF and

PI)
The Autoland evaluation with the Standard Procedure described in section 2.2 was
performed on 10880 ight data recordings. These ights are from the daily operation
of the Airbus A320fam eet, from two months (December and January) with mete-
orological conditions prone to low visibility in the northern hemisphere. The results
obtained with the classication algorithms from section 2.2 are presented in Fig 2.11.
Figure 2.11: Results from 10880 Flights
According to the conditions described, 354 ights have been classied as Autoland
and 513 as Autoapproach. Finally for the rst case there are 23 PPF and 17 PI. For
the second case a total of 174 PPF have been detected.
At this stage just the output le of AGS program is being used, i.e., no pre-processing
or outlier removal was performed. The conditions can be met either for a real case or
outlier data appearing due to noise.
There is no a-priori justication to have a certain amount of Autoland output out of
the processed ights, as it depends on the ceiling and visibility conditions on the des-
tination airports. Winter conditions are more prone to less visibility and to automatic
landings to be performed. Note that, as stated before, the majority of the ights are
manual landings.
The distribution of PPFs for the Successful Autoland detected is in Table 2.11
The most restrictive condition on Table 2.11 is PPF6. Checking where these results
appear (Fig 2.12), we can see that all the values beyond the gating condition are quite
close to the limit (6.5o ), which leads to the conclusion that this limit may have a
conservative value.
Having in mind that the origin of this limit is from tables 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5 which
determine the limits imposed by the aircraft manufacturer, it can be seen that there is
still a margin to increase the limit of Pitch angle at Touch-Down. This is also justied
by the geometry limits for Airbus A320fam presented in Table 2.12, which limits Pitch
values for a Tail-Strike to happen [22]. Out of this table the most limiting value for
pitch is for Airbus A321 (the longest), with a value of 9.7o . Performing a balance
26
Table 2.11: PPF conditions distributions
Condition Decription Number of Ocurrencies

PPF1 Maximum Pitch During Landing 1
PPF2 Rate of Descend @ 100ft (RALT) 0
PPF3 Rate of Descend @ 30ft (RALT) 1
PPF4 Rate of Descend @ TD 5
PPF5 ROLL angle @ TD 0
PPF6 PITCH angle @ TD 14
PPF7 LOC Deviation @ TD Sys#1 0
PPF8 LOC Deviation @ TD Sys#2 0
PPF9 Time from RALT=50ft to TD 6
Figure 2.12: PPF6 Results
between these two sources of information, a value of 7.5o will be set for the pitch limit
at touch-down in future analyses.
Table 2.12: Airbus A320fam Published Pitch Limits
TailStrike Pitch angle

Landing Gear Compressed
o
Extended
o
A319 13.9 15.7
A320 11.7o 13.7o
A321 9.7o 11.4o
2.6 Histogram Evaluation

A key challenge in this project, common to other works [16], is to dene Abnormality
or its opposite. This is a typical problem for binary classication, in which there is
a classication in two states. The establishment of this denition will determine the
Autoland ights that the analyst has to focus, so it is of paramount importance to
separate the Normal from Abnormal cases in a precise and robust way. This may
be a hard task to accomplish, as in the real world, the data is corrupted with noise,
specially in the aircraft environment recording. Due to this fact, a number of Outliers
may appear that can be confused with Abnormal cases.
In Sections 2.2.2 and 2.2.1 the criteria based on aircraft manufacturer information
was presented. This is a setting of rules that determine cases considered as Normal.
27
With these criteria the number of cases to be checked by one analyst dropped from
354 to 23 + 17 = 40 (Fig 2.11) on the rst evaluation processing.
There is though a big incidence on Touch-Down values on the Poor Performance
criteria as presented in Table 2.6. Despite these values are of major importance for
the landing performance assessment, this analysis can be extended by the use of data
collected on the other keypoints during the approach and landing (presented before in
Figs 2.5 and 2.6).
As there are no reference values from the manufacturer on the remaining keypoints,
the determination of the distribution for a certain number of parameters shall be pro-
duced in the form of histograms. The presentation of the data in this way allows the
analyst to determine what are the values far apart from the average, and consider these
cases as Abnormal. These can be either outliers or real abnormal cases.
The rst diculty on having such an approach has to do with the number of param-
eters that dene each landing presented in Table 2.8. This is a set of 270 parameters
containing numeric data, strings and binary values. In order to evaluate the some pos-
sible methods to analyse this data, a sub-set of numeric parameters which are relevant
for the landing are extracted from the le generated in the AGS Procedure (Appendix
C). The le that is created is described in the next section.
2.6.1 Evaluation File Format

The parameters to be used, are selected from the exported le described in Table 2.8.
The criteria to choose the parameters is that they shall represent the performance of
the landing and they shall be independent of the landing airport, which excludes for
example the Heading or Standard Altitude.
The selected parameters are dened in Table 2.13, having one sample on each of
keypoints from Table 2.14. The set of data is complete with the parameters from
Table 2.15 which are calculated once per landing. To summarize, the whole set of
parameters is presented in Table 2.16.
Table 2.13: Parameters Extracted by keypoint
Mnemonic Description Units

ROD Rate of Descend [ft/sec]
LOC Localiser Deviation [deg]
GS Glide Slope Deviation [deg]
PITCH Pitch Angle [deg]
VRTG Vertical Acceleration [G]
FPA Flight Path Angle [deg]
28
Table 2.14: keypoints
Keypoints
Landing Track
100ft of Radio Altitude
Threshold
30ft of Radio Altitude
Flare
Touch Down
Table 2.15: Ground Calculations
Mnemonic Description
DELTAT_LT Time between Land Track and Touch Down
DELTAT_TH Time between Threshold and Touch Down
DELTAT_LG De-rotation Time - Time between MLG Touch Down and Nose LG Touch Down
LAND_DIST Airborne Distance - Distance between Threshold and Touch Down
POOR_INTEG Autoland Performance according to criteria described in Section 2.2.2
POOR_PERF Autoland Integrity according to criteria described in Section 2.2.1
Table 2.16: Evaluation File Format
ROD_LT LOC1_LT GS1_LT PITCH_LT VRTG_LT FPA_LT

ROD_100 LOC1_100 GS1_100 PITCH_100 VRTG_100 FPA_100
ROD_TH LOC1_TH GS1_TH PITCH_TH VRTG_TH FPA_TH
ROD_30 LOC1_30 GS1_30 PITCH_30 VRTG_30 FPA_30
ROD_FL LOC1_FL GS1_FL PITCH_FL VRTG_FL FPA_FL
ROD_TD LOC1_TD GS1_TD PITCH_TD VRTG_TD FPA_TD
DELTAT_LT DELTAT_TH DELTAT_LG LAND_DIST POOR_INTEG POOR_PERF
All of these parameters are variable quantities in a total of 42 values, which is

assumed that can be approximated by Gaussian distributions except for the last two
which correspond to the PPF and PI classications.
The following sections makes use of the 354 autoland ights determined by the
AGS Autoland Procedure (Appendix C) and presented in section 2.5. The Histogram
Evaluation graphically explores this data identifying the outlier values present in the
data set that leads its removing to build a new dataset without any extreme values
present. This new set is to be used by the methods in next sections as the standard
set, i.e., the one with which new data is to be compared.
29
2.7 Outlier Identication and Removal
The histograms presented in this section highlight some cases where there are values
clearly beyond the limits. This study was applied to all the dimensions of the le
presented in Table 2.16. Figures 2.13 to 2.18 show the eect of removing the rogue
values from the initial 354 set of Autoland ights. The clean dataset is composed of
276 ights.
Rate of Descend @ Threshold Rate of Descend @ Threshold

350
20
300
15
250
Frequency
Frequency
200
10
150
100
5
50
0
0
0 200 400 600 −16 −14 −12 −10
[ft/sec] [ft/sec]
Figure 2.13: Rate of Descend with Outliers Figure 2.14: Rate of Descend Clean [ft/sec]
[ft/sec]
Localizer @ Land Track Localizer @ Land Track

35
120
30
100
25
80
Frequency
Frequency
20
60
15
40
10
20
5
0
−5 0 5 10 15 20 −4 −2 0 2 4
[mDDM] [mDDM]
Figure 2.15: Localizer @ Land Track with Figure 2.16: Localizer @ Land Track Clean
Outliers [mDDM] [mDDM]
The Outliers values may be originated by bad recording data corrupted by noise.
The examination of the outlier cases allows the identication of several causes that
origin extreme values to appear in the data set. One case identied was with one value
of Rate of Descend at Flare, that indicates −49f t/sec. This would indicate a value
of −2940f t/min in the vertical speed indicator presented in the cockpit. Making use
of the results obtained for this set of Autoland ights we can see that the average
radio altitude for Flare in 30f t, and the average time from Flare to Touch-Down is
4.67 seconds. if the value for Rate of Descend presented was true this time would be
30
Vertical Acceleration @ Flare Vertical Acceleration @ Flare
35
150
30
25
100
Frequency
Frequency
20
15
50
10
5
0
0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0.90 0.95 1.00 1.05 1.10
[g] [g]
Figure 2.17: Vertical Acceleration @ Flare Figure 2.18: Vertical Acceleration @ Flare
with Outliers [g] Clean [g]
less than 1 second. The data from this specic ight in the Flare area is presented in
Figure 2.19. In this gure, it can be seen that there are 4 seconds of recorded data
missing, exactly in the area where the are should appear. It can be seen in the last
column that data is missing from a radio altitude of 74f t till 18.5f t, which leads to
the Abnormal value presented.
Figure 2.19: Bad Recording data example (missing data)
Another way that Outliers can be generated is through errors produced during
calculations. An example of this situation can be seen in Figure 2.13. This histogram
is deformed due to the presence of four false values of rate of descend in the sample of
354 autolands. The rogue values are 444f t/sec, 458f t/sec, 692f t/sec and 740f t/sec,
clearly displaced of the average. The parameters from one of this ights is presented
in Figure 2.20, indicating where the threshold was detected (parameter TRESH ). It
is a premature detection when the barometric altitude is around 800f t and the radio
altitude indicates some instability which induced the error in the calculation of the
31
threshold crossing (Appendix B.6).
Figure 2.20: Threshold Calculation Error
A third option for the outlier to appear is due to a real displacement from the average
values. This is the case of the localizer deviation presented in Figure ?? and detailed
in Figure 2.21. In this gure there are two regions where some interference appears
in the localizer signal. The rst around 3000f t of barometric altitude and the second
around 1500f t. It important to keep in mind that this dierence has a visualization in
the cockpit instrumentation of 0.4 dot approximately (77.5mDDM = 1dot in Localizer
- Section B.7.2). This value, despite being beyond the normal values, was not enough
either for the autopilot to disconnect automatically or manually by the pilots, and the
Autoland was performed with success.
Figure 2.21: Unstable Localizer signal during landing
The presentation of the data in the form of histograms, allow each of the parameters
to be compared within its equals of the whole set. This criteria looks at each parameter
individually and in case it is out of the criteria the whole ight will be agged as an
abnormal case. This is a valid procedure based on the composition of Univariate
32
Analysis.
The examples in this section show that there is an improvement on the detection of
abnormal cases with the new approach of Histogram Evaluation on each keypoiny. Due
to the fact that there is no condition for the Land Track or Threshold on the Standard
Procedure, the situations above have not been identied either as PPF or PI.
Once the Abnormal cases are identied within the set of 354 Autoland ights, they
are removed in order to produce a new set, in which these values do not aect the
average (µ) and standard deviation calculations (σ ). This new, clean set is intended to
be used in the evaluation of new cases, i.e, the parameters values of Autoland ights
are directly compared with µ ± nσ, n ∈ N to evaluate whether it is a value that can be
considered as Normal, having as a base the initial set of 354 ights.
2.8 Criteria to Identify Abnormal Cases

The identication of the Outliers was accomplished with the help of the histograms
presented in section 2.6. After being removed, the resulting histograms from section
2.7 present a new situation, i.e., these are no rogue values that distorts the bell-shaped
curve.
At this stage, the ways to evaluate Autoland performance are:
• Poor Performance and Poor Integrity (Standard Procedure)
• Outliers Identication (Through the histogram analysis)
These criteria are used to identify the ights that divert from the average (µ) of the
remaining ights or are marked with PPF or PI. In practice it is created one extra
column in the output le from the AGS Procedure, named Label, that will contain the
value yi = 1 for the Normal cases and yi = −1 otherwise. When at least one condition
happens, the label will become yi = −1 performing in this way the logic OR of the
criteria indicated above.
The limits of ±2σ superimposed in the histograms, can be used as a reference that
establish the frontier to separate the Normal from Abnormal cases. The goal for this
identication is to decrease the workload of the analyst and let him/her to be focussed
only in the most extreme cases.
Up to this point the methods applied consisted in the analysis of a single param-
eter at a time, which is one Unidimensional analysis, i.e., each parameter is tested
individually, being the nal labelling a combination of these results (in this case a
OR ).
There is though the concern that the correlations between the dierent parameters
could add extra information to the results or put in evidence other features of the
data. This leads to the Multivariate approach to this problem which is described in
the following section.
33
2.9 Multidimensional Evaluation
The studies performed in the previous sections (2.5 and 2.6) are based on the composi-
tion of single parameter analyses. In this section, analytical tools from the Multidimen-
sional or Multivariate Analysis [23] [24] [25] will be used in order to ease the workload
to detect Abnormal patterns in the Autoland data. Under this context, each parame-
ter is now referred as a dimension of the space Rm which in this case corresponds to
m = 42. The most evident limitation when working with a higher dimensional space
is the loosing of graphic capability to describe the data in a straightforward way.
In the previous section, the solution was to plot all the dimensions in a histogram
per each dimension. It is though easy to see that this is a time consuming task, and
more dicult as the dimension gets higher. In this section a study to overcome these
diculties is presented. The method to be applied to the Autoland Data Matrix with
dimension 354×42 is the Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Each row of this matrix
is now considered as an observation of a m dimensional random vector. The PCA is
applied to Autoland data and nally a graphic evaluation of the multidimensional data
is introduced, the Biplot graphical presentation.
2.9.1 Principal Components Analysis (PCA)

The Principal Components Analysis (PCA) is a statistical technique that is used to nd
patterns in data of high dimension. It can be used to reduce the number of dimensions,
to compress data with a low loss of information.
The PCA uses the Single Value Decomposition (SVD) method to compute the eigen-
vectors and eigenvalues from the covariance matrix. The eigenvectors are ordered with
the magnitude of the eigenvalues, such that the rst one is the eigenvector that has the
largest eigenvalue. These eigenvectors denes the direction that describes the largest
variability present in the data. In order to describe the application of the PCA, it is
assumed that the data is generated according to the multidimensional Normal Density
Function (Equation 2.1),
1 1 X−1
fθ (θ) = P exp(− (θ − µ)T
(θ − µ)) (2.1)
2π m/2 | |1/2 2
P
where θ is a m dimensional column vector, µ represents the mean and is the
Covariance matrix of Xn×m , dened as:
 
σ1 2 σ12 . . . σ1m
X  σ21 σ2 2 . . . σ2m 
=
 ... .. .. ..  (2.2)
(m×m) . . . 
σm1 σm2 . . . σm 2
with entries dened as:
34
Pn
− x)(yi − y)
i=1 (xi
σxy = (2.3)
n−1
Let the data be organized in a matrix Xn×m such that each column represents a
dimension (data component) and each row represents a sample point. The rst step
consists in obtaining one estimate of the mean (µ̂) for each dimension,
1X
n
µˆj = xij (2.4)
n i=1
to compute the covariance matrix from the sampled data,
X
d 1
= (x − µ̂)T (x − µ̂) (2.5)
m−1
where (x − µ̂) represents the subtraction of µj from each xj column (centering data).
Dening Z = X − µ̂ and using the SVD factorization, then Z = UΛVT , where U
and V are orthogonal matrices with n × n and m × m sizes respectively and,
 
λ1 0 ... 0
 0 λ2 ... 0 

 .. .. .. .. 
 . . . . 
 
Λ, 0 0 . . . λm  (2.6)
 
 0 0 ... 0 
 . .. .. .. 
 .. . . . 
0 0 ... 0
P
It follows from Equation 2.1 that (θ − µ)T −1 (θ − µ)) can be written as
(θ − µ)T V(ΛT Λ)−1 VT (θ − µ)), where V contains the eigenvectors to transform the
data, ΛT Λ contains the eigenvalues that are used to select the principal components
and
W , VT (θ − µ) (2.7)
represents the transformation that is used to detect patterns in the space generated
by the Principal Components. Note that ΛT Λ is a diagonal matrix which can be
interpreted as the covariance matrix of the uncorrelated statistic variables {wj } with
λ2i representing its variance.
This method can be used to classify the data for new Autoland ights in the following
way:
35
1. Select a set of Autoland ights that represent the Normal performance.
P
2. Apply the PCA to the set dened in the previous point by computing µ̂, c, V
and {λ2i }.
3. given a new Autoland, θ, use Equation 2.7 to compute w and compare wj with
λ2j , j = 1, 2, ..., m to classify the performance of the Autoland.
The application the the Autoland data matrix is produced with the script presented
in Appendix ??. This analysis provides 42 Principal Components, which is the space
dimension, that follow the decreasing order of Variance shown in Figure 2.22 1 .
2.0
Standard Deviation
1.5
1.0
0.5
0 10 20 30 40
Primary Components
Figure 2.22: Principal Components Standard Deviation
The Analysis of this Figure, shows that the higher the Principal Component is, the
less it contributes to the total Variance of the set. The eect of Principal Component
Variance contribution, can be seen using the Cumulated Variance which is dened for
the rst k principal directions as:
Pk 2
i=1 (σ )
CU M _V ARk = Pi (2.8)
trace( )
The graphical representation of Equation 2.8 is presented in Figure 2.23 and calcu-
lated in Appendix ??.
Being one accumulated value, each Principal Component adds its Variance to the
total Variance of the set, till the value of ”1” is attained if all the 42 principal directions
are taken into account (Figure 2.23).
This graphic provides the information about which Principal Components from the
set are relevant to describe the full set without loosing much information. In this
case, for the Autoland data, it is represented in Figure 2.23 an horizontal line that
corresponds to 93% of the total Variance of the set. This occurs for the 24th Principal
Component, which means that the dimension of the space can be reduced from 42 to
24, keeping 93% of the total variance of the set. The remaining 18 dimensions just
cope with 7% of the total variance.
1 The Variance follows the same line as the Standard Deviation because V AR(X) = σx2
36
1.0
0.8
Cumulative Proportion of Variance
0.6
0.4
0.2
0 10 20 30 40
Primary Components
Figure 2.23: Cumulative Proportion of Variance
2.9.2 Biplot Graphics

The Biplot graphic is a companion technique for the Principal Component analysis,
as it allows the graphic representation of the vectors from the Rm space, and its cor-
responding principal directions, which are the eigenvectors from the space [26]. This
provides a rapid overlook of a high dimensional matrix. The Biplot makes evident the
internal structure of a table data and turns this technique into one interesting tool to
use in several areas of knowledge [27].
This graphical representation performs the projection of all dimensions over two axis
corresponding to the rst two principal components. This is achieved by expanding
the data matrix X(n×m) in the form of a Rank Two approximation (Equation 2.9) [26]
[25].
X̂(n×m) = Y(n×2) ZT
(2×m) (2.9)
Where Y is known as Row Marker Matrix and Z the Column Marker Matrix. Keep-
ing just two dimensions is one approximation that corresponds to use the rst two
principal components or eigenvectors to describe the data. This loss is compensated
by gaining the capability to represent the data graphically. The Biplot graphic is con-
structed with the plotting of the rows of matrix Y that represents the points of the
data and the columns of matrix Z that represents the projections of the remaining
principal components on the plane dened by the rst two principal components (see
Figure 2.24).
The conversion of the data into the form of Equation 2.9 can be achieved by factor-
izing the data matrix X with the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD), already used
in the previous section,
X = UΛVT (2.10)
Taking the rst two columns of U, yelding K = ΛVT and considering its rst two
rows, the Equations 2.9 and 2.10 can be compared, resulting:
37
Y(n×2) = Û(n×2) (2.11)
ZT
(2×m) = K̂(2×m) (2.12)
The rst Biplot graphic produced is in Figure 2.24. This image is one display of
the Autoland data matrix with dimension (354 × 42) without any dimension reduction
provided by the Principal Component analysis study (Appendix ??).
Biplot without input space reduction

−6000 −4000 −2000 0 2000 4000 6000
165 254 193

31
146
0.2
5000
0.1
33 210
18
189
246
192 244 219 307 99
352103
340
148 70245
129
206
287
266
350 187
132
207
123
349
114 195
83 213
305 95
332
301 299
180229
60120
348 110
351
118 212
25 152 173
260
339 96
344
250
274
73 338185
262
44
117
347
104
345
196
59
327
158
36108 42
124
94
168
333 306
113
271
202
52 7255 3
252
292
208
220343
277241 141
303
51
88200
216
251
261
296
199
289 119
145257
176
7775147
342
151
139
214
184
279
133
26562 64 136 4393 56
Comp.2
69 291
346218
227 191781281
263 82 126
267125174
87 2114197
231
67 30
211 171 53
0.0
143
47284258336
302 2 330
181
71
280
223221
232
354
2492352
297 36 247194
131
328 74166 326
GS1_100
121
ROD_TD
PITCH_TD
PITCH_FL
PITCH_TH
PITCH_LT
PITCH_30
FPA_LT
FPA_100
PITCH_100
FPA_TD
FPA_FL
FPA_TH
FPA_30
ROD_LT 63
224 35
32 16929
127
198 81 34300
0
283243
156 157
298
107
331 DELTAT_LG
VRTG_FL
LOC1_FL
LOC1_LT
ROD_100
LOC1_30
POOR_INTEG
POOR_PERF
VRTG_TD
VRTG_30
LOC1_100
VRTG_LT
VRTG_100
VRTG_TH
LOC1_TD
LOC1_TH
ROD_30
ROD_FL
DELTAT_LT
GS1_LT
204 230
DELTAT_TH
GS1_TH
48 80
GS1_FL
GS1_30 102
310
270
138
27323272 57
233
GS1_TD 203
16 89
79 91242
205
140
45100
128
315
253 222
309
115 39286
85 97
225
159 98 116
167
ROD_TH105
290
101
234
144
334
130 318324
314 186 135 23910
329
90
109
154 209
275
22 190 269142
61
153 201
28183 111
304 316 112 293 12
50 49 38
40 106 21554 276 325 321 353268
6 335
58 41 320
264 175 162 319163 84
285 248 68 161 226
179
13
313
164 27
288188 19 312
26 LAND_DIST
322 149
65 228
323
240 11
282 341
295
17 155 237 150 160238 178
8 66 20 46 217 172
137255 86182
294
24 134122 5 256 177
311
308 278
7
−0.1
4
337 317
76
259
−5000
92
170
−0.2
15
9
37
−0.2 −0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2
Comp.1
Figure 2.24: Biplot diagram all autoland dimensions
The analysis of this graphic clearly highlights the relative position of some vectors
from the set of the whole 354, that are out of the cloud comprising the cases that can
be considered as Normal. these vectors are resumed in Table 2.17.
Table 2.17: Biplot Graphic for the 354 Autoland detected
x9 x15 x31 x37 x76 x92

x146 x165 x170 x193 x254 x259
If the criteria is tightened, some more cases can be chosen on the border of the
cloud, but those referred are clearly identied from Figure 2.24.
38
Dimension Reductions
The Principal Component analysis from Section 2.9.1, provides the results that shall
now be applied. The conclusion from this study was that 24 dimensions could represent
93% of the Variance of the whole set. On the other hand, Figure 2.24 shows which cases
are considered out of the Normal situation without any reduction on the dimension
of the set. Building the Biplot graphic for the rst 24 principal components results in
Figure 2.25 (code in Appendix ??). It can be veried that the same vectors presented in
Table 2.17 fall outside the main cloud, which conrms the assumption that the original
space dimension can be reduced to 24 dimensions.
Highest Variance Components

−2000 −1000 0 1000 2000
15 37
9
3000
0.2
92
2000
170
76
0.1
337 259
24 160
1000
317 294
4
155 308
134122 86 11 311 278
177
866
313 1644627 137255 5 161
182
13 162 26
288 19 172
17 20 507 188217 54 149 68 178 323 256 295
49 38
237 190
140
106 150
175 84215
163
Comp.20
23865
322
314112 6 240
282 41 341
226
264 319
142 135
40 9091 315
275 115
Comp.6 80
285
167
105
101 138276Comp.1
312 321 353 239
Comp.2
154
109 209128
61
269
309
39
28 230
Comp.8
111 334 329
10268320
89 22 242
45
205
354
100153
253
107 302166
159
Comp.17
304116
Comp.19 53234293
144
58
57
127
233
6412 228 Comp.14
81 179
0.0
Comp.13 Comp.11 79156

232
223 211
203 331
236
297
291 222
336
85183
22598
48 87 231
130
316
273
248 23318 198
324
Comp.15
169
325 335
28697
204 270 34
0
243
280 157
47 218Comp.5
247
Comp.16 201
281 77
121
Comp.24
290 63
224 29
16 221
69292
249 235 298
250
346227
Comp.10 328
17126374
289 2102
326
1262167
33035 Comp.18
32
181
272 186 56
300
Comp.21
Comp.12
283 252284 131
Comp.9
78
Comp.3
51
88 262
344258 1267
261
Comp.2 75
174
125
176 14
310 71
214
26562
143 241
Comp.7 19982 119
Comp.4
145
36
345 139
151 52
342
212
257
168 306 Comp.23
93
208 220 73
200
194
191 347
216
185
301
351 333
10894 229
202 Comp.22
136
7255 173 30
260
339 141
277 274 44
251
303 117 124
113
327
147
42
158 152
60
197
133
279184 433
96 343 266
118
196
350
332 195
83 271 120
207
206 180
25
348 338 296352 187
349299 305
−1000
123
340
1147059 95
244110 287
104
148
307245129213
192 103132
189
219246 99
−0.1
33
18
210
−2000
31
−0.2
−3000
146
193
165 254
−0.2 −0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2
Comp.1
Figure 2.25: Biplot Graphic for 24 Highest Components
There is though the concern on which components are the most representative of
the set. Shall it be the ones that have a high Variance or the lowest ones. This is the
same as knowing which represents more information for the set, the variables that have
a high Variance or the ones that vary on minimum quantities. To have one assessment
of the answers to this problem, the same study was conducted for the lowest Variance
components, and the result is presented in Figure 2.26.
Both studies on Figures 2.25 and 2.26 have been conducted with the support of
Figures 2.24 and 2.23. In the last case of low Variance, there was a successive incre-
ment of the dimensions being considered, till the same vectors of Table 2.17 become
evident. This was achieved with the lowest 36 Principal components. In conclusion,
to reach the same results one needs more 12 components when using the lowest prin-
cipal components instead of the highest, which means that there is no benet on this
approach.
39
Lowest Variance Components
−2000 −1000 0 1000 2000
31
193
254
165 146
0.2
2000
0.1 210 189 33
18 246
307 244
99245 340352
266
206
219
207 301 192
229
305 195
129187
70
83103
349148
350
332
123
173 152
9555
120 60212
Comp.25
306 132
180 287
114 351 73 250
347
213
72 29994117
168
333
327
202 25
124
11342 118
36185 274 344260
56 214 52
271158
231 345261 Comp.7
262 348 339
933Comp.22
Comp.23 59108
257
Comp.26
342 77
119
196 289
110199
21644 22096252292
Comp.2
64184265
279
62
133147176
139
53 75
21
151 145
126
87
104 251
3381
Comp.9
7851Comp.10
141 88 291 Comp.12
69
211
Comp.21 43
136 127330 67
14 125
1742230
267
281
296
82
166 302
Comp.33
263
303336
343 218
277
227 346208354223Comp.11 Comp.13
232
0.0
30 29169
198
57 197
181 Comp.36
Comp.37
Comp.24
138 326
Comp.4080 200171
Comp.16
Comp.29 241
24728447
236 280
221
34 81Comp.18 35
32
71314
233 Comp.31
Comp.30
224
63 74 191 128297
235
143
0
10 135 324
Comp.15 23
234
270 121
Comp.34
102 204
48
Comp.17 328
131
194258 157
107
315
331242243
140 249
156
239
329 272 273
Comp.42
Comp.35
Comp.32
310
144
116 98
167
Comp.41
105
Comp.38225 222
15939
97 309 298
115 100
253 1902059189283
300
Comp.14 293
161 334
318 Comp.19
112 Comp.8
101
Comp.39 85 203
154
10990
41 353
11
186 Comp.27
12 6 68
321
130
27631654 111
215
30484319
290
142
Comp.6
286 269
28 162 209
106
275 45
61175 22
153 38
79 1650
49 40
320268 282 58 149Comp.20 201 288
18326Comp.28
163 26427 155 13
313
179
341
295 226
323335325 312 19160
285
188 164
240 65 322
178
294 248
238 150 17
668
228 172137 237 46 2420
182
5 255 122
86 134 217
177 256
278 311 308
−0.1
4 317 337 7
76
−2000
259
92
−0.2
170
15
9
−4000
37
−0.3
−0.2 −0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2
Comp.1
Figure 2.26: Biplot Graphic for 36 Lowest Components
2.10 Summary
In this Chapter an Autoland analysis was created producing one output le that is to
be used on the remaining of the project for normality evaluation. This le is composed
with 354 autolands and 42 relevant dimensions during landing have been extracted.
On this le it was applied some methodologies to detect Abnormal cases. The
methods tested are:
• Standard Procedure
• Histogram Evaluation
• Principal Component Analysis (PCA)
In a perspective to create one complete solution, i.e., one that other than implement-
ing the Autoland analysis, implements one automatic classication of new analyses
produced, a complement of tools and methods are used to achieve this goal. Up to this
stage, AGS produces the Autoland analysis le that is further investigated with data
mining tools outside AGS. In this case tools like Matlab, Octave or the R statistical
Environment allow a deeper investigation on the AGS le results. The methods above
identied Abnormal cases each one according to its criteria. These cases are identied
in the generated le with a eld containing a Label.
The automatic assignment of such labels is still one part of the work that is to
be studied in the remaining Chapters. One of the state-of-the-art areas that deals
with the classication of Multivariate Data is the area of Kernel Methods and Support
40
Vector Machines. In the References there are several works that indicate the trend
to use this kind of techniques with Flight Data Analysis, specially the work from
NASA in references [15] and [28]. Also the work presented in reference [17] presents
one comparative study of dierent methodologies to analyse Flight Data in order to
detect Abnormal behaviours. This study indicates that the Support Vector Machines
algorithms have a suitable performance to be used for binary classication, i.e., the
distinction between two states such as Normal and Abnormal.
There is a benet for the airline, and for the analysis that all of these situations are
identied in a in a precise way, so that the analysis eort can be reduced by focussing
directly the cases that may have additional information, or may be problematic. Out-
liers are in this context identied as cases clearly distinct from the remaining present
in the data set.
The next Chapter gives a presentation about the theory behind the concepts of
Kernel Methods and Support Vector Machines.
41
Chapter 3
Kernel Methods and Support Vector

Machines
3.1 Introduction to SVMs

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are one established area of Machine Learning The-
ory with a vast elds of applications such as Bioinformatics; Finance and Banking;
Pharmaceutical and medical applications to name a few.
An SVM is an abstract learning machine which will learn from the training data
set and attempt to generalise and make correct predictions on novelty data [29]. This
method is also known as inductive inference [30].
For the predictions to be generated a model is constructed based on previous data.
There are two ways to produce one prediction based on previous samples of data which
are designated as Supervised Learning and Unsupervised Learning. In the Supervised
Learning we can conceive the presence of a teacher which produces the classication
of a certain amount of data in the form of labelled samples. This set will be named
Training Set. The learning machine extracts the model out of these examples, and
it reproduces this knowledge for new data in order to predict the output with the
minimum error possible [31]. The Unsupervised Learning does not rely on the help of
a teacher and the model is built as the data appears. Normally no previous knowledge
of the model is known. In the course of this project the Supervised Learning will be
implemented, making use of the classication criteria presented in sections 2.5 and 2.6
to prepare a Training Set for the SVM.
The structure of the input data (xi ) and the corresponding labels (yi ) is presented
in Equation 3.1. Each line is one input vector xi ∈ X . The labels yi ∈ Y are also
known as Targets or Outputs.
 
x1,1 x1,2 . . . x1,m , y1
 x2,1 x2,2 . . . x2,m , y2 
(xi , yi ) ≡ 
 ... .. .. .. ..  (3.1)
. . . . 
xn,1 xn,2 . . . xn,m , yn
The set X in an m dimensional space, known as Input Space. The structure of an
42
inner product shall be dened on this space with the notation w·x ≡ wT x. Having the
inner product dened, the metrics of distance and angle between vectors arise naturally
from this denition. A space with these characteristics is known as an Euclidean space.
The calculations that will be presented in the following sections make use of the dot
product and space metrics of distance.
In the Matrix 3.1, each column of the Input Space is known as a feature. In the case
of the project here presented, the features are the extracted parameters according to
the algorithm presented in section 2.3.4.
The set Y , for a multiclass classier, is a k dimensional space representing k classes
for grouping data. In the case of binary classication, which is the focus of this project,
we have Y ≡ {±1} and only one of these two labels are assigned to each vector from
Matrix 3.1.
To apply the Supervised Learning concept to the ight data in practice, there are
three sets of data that will be used during this project. These are:
• Training Set - Labelled data points in the Input Space

• Testing Set - Data from Input Space from which there is no previous knowledge
of its labels.
• Predictions - Output of the Support Vector Machine.
The goal is to estimate the relationship between inputs xi and the corresponding
labels yi . The eort for having a suitable SVM is to have estimator function f that
correctly predicts the label yi for a given input vector xi (Equation 3.2).
f : X ∈ Rm −→ Y ∈ Rk (3.2)
The typical use of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) involves two steps. First to
train the data to obtain a model, and second using this model to predict results on a
testing data set [32].
3.2 Binary Classier - Hard Margins

The most simple situation for data classication is to have two sets of data in R2 which
are not aected by noise or are intermeshed as presented in Figure 3.1. The data in
these conditions will be used to present the general ideas for classication with Support
Vector Machines. The other two cases will be addressed in sections 3.3 and 3.4.
For a binary classication such as in Fig 3.1, the task of the SVM is to nd the
best hyperplane, that separates the 2 clusters of data. In this Figure it is represented
a training set with yi = +1 for the stars and yi = −1 for squares.
One can visualize a large amount of separating hyperplanes for these 2 sets of data,
but the best is the one which is maximally distant from the 2 classes each side. This
means that the value of the margin, ρ, has to be maximized so that the hyperplane is
equidistant from both classes.
43
Figure 3.1: SVM Principle - Binary Classication Hard Margins
The best separating hyperplane is represented by Equation 3.3, where w is the

normal vector to the hyperplane and xi the data input vector. the value of b is the
bias, i.e., the oset from the origin in the input space (also known as intercept term
[33]).
wT xi + b = 0 (3.3)
The setting of the scale is performed by assigning wT x + b = 1 for the positive side
and wT x + b = −1 in the negative case. These two hyperplanes dene the maximum
margin possible, and are known as Canonical Hyperplanes. The region that is located
within these hyperplanes is dened as the Margin Band (Figure 3.1).
On one side of the hyperplane we have wT xi + b > 0 (stars), and on the other
side wT xi + b < 0 (squares), which leads to the decision function (Equation 3.4) to
determine in which side will be any new input vector x.
f(x) = sign(wT x + b) (3.4)
Considering the value of yi on each side of the hyperplane, the relation 3.5 is always
valid, as this is a product of either two negative numbers or two positives.
yi (wT xi + b) > 0 i = 1, 2, ..., n (3.5)
Picking any two vectors that lie on each of the Canonical Hyperplanes such as x1
and x2 (Fig 3.1), the Equations wT x1 + b = 1 and wT x2 + b = −1 are valid, by
denition of the hyperplanes.
44
Subtracting both equations yields the result presented in 3.6.
wT (x1 − x2 ) = 2 (3.6)
Dividing Equation 3.6 by kwk we obtain the projection of vector (x1 − x2 ) over the
unitary normal vector w/kwk (Equation 3.7). This corresponds to the margin ρ, that
has to be maximized.
w 2
(x1 − x2 )T = (3.7)
kwk kwk
2
ρ= (3.8)
kwk
From the result presented in Equation 3.8, it is easy to conclude that the maximiza-
tion of the margin ρ, is equivalent to the minimization of kwk, which is rewritten in
Equation 3.9, known as Objective Function.

1 1 T
min kwk ⇔ min w w
2
(3.9)
2 2
Keeping in mind that for the present case with no noise all the points satisfy the
condition |wT xi + b| ≥ 1, when multiplied by the labels, a new constraint to the
Objective Function appears in the form of Equation 3.10.
yi (wT xi + b) ≥ 1 i = 1, 2, 3, ..., m (3.10)
Equations 3.9 and 3.10 represent a quadratic optimization problem with constraints,
which is solved using Lagrange Multipliers. The Lagrangian Function is thus repre-
sented by Equation 3.11. This is a convex function in which the rst member is the
Objective Function, the second corresponds to the constraints and αi ≥ 0 are the
Lagrange Multipliers.
1 X n
L(w, b, α) = (wT w) − αi (yi (wT xi + b) − 1) (3.11)
2 i=1
Equation 3.11 is known as the Primal Formulation of the minimization problem,

which is achieved by dierentiating 3.11, with respect to its variables w and b, as
presented in Eqs 3.12 and 3.13.
45
∂L X n X n
=0⇔− αi yi = 0 ⇔ αi y i = 0 (3.12)
∂b i=1 i=1
∂L X n X n
=0⇔w− αi yi xi = 0 ⇔ w = αi yi xi (3.13)
∂w i=1 i=1
By replacing Equations 3.13 and 3.12 into 3.11, the primal variables w and b are
eliminated (see 3.14) [34].
1 X n
L(w, b, α) = (wT w) − αi (yi (wT xi + b) − 1) =
2
! n ! " i=1
! ! ! #
1 X
n X X n Xn
= αi yi xi αj yj xj − αi y i αj yj xj xi + b − 1 =
2 i=1 j=1 i=1 j=1
1 X
n X
n n X X
n
= αi αj yi yj (xT
i xj ) − α i αj y i y j (xT
i xj ) − b αi yi + αi
2 i,j=1 i,j=1 i=1 i=1
(3.14)
The result of this calculation is known as the Dual Formulation of the problem
W(α) represented in Equation 3.15.
X
n
1X
n
W(α) = αi − αi αj yi yj (xT
i xj ) (3.15)
i=1
2 i,j=1
The Dual Formulation (Equation 3.15) has the advantage of normally being easier
to solve than the Primal Formulation (Equation 3.11), as the optimization is produced
using the dot product of the input data (xi ) and the corresponding labels (yi ). For this
reason the construction of this problem is oriented to obtain the solution of the Dual
Formulation.
According to the theory optimization with constraints, the optimum solution for
both Equations 3.11 and 3.15 is the same and will represented as (w∗ , b∗ , α∗ ). This
point is known as the Saddle Point of function L(w, b, α), which is obtained by the min-
imization of the function regarding the primal variables (w, b), and the maximization
in order to the dual variable (α). It satises the following two conditions (Equations
3.16 and 3.17):
L(w∗ , b∗ , α∗ ) ≤ L(w, b, α∗ ) ⇔ minL(w, b, α∗ ) ∀w, b (3.16)

w,b
46
L(w∗ , b∗ , α∗ ) > L(w∗ , b∗ , α) ⇔ W(α∗ ) > W(α) ⇔ maxW(α) ∀α (3.17)
α
The importance of the Saddle Point is that it is a sucient condition for the existence
of a solution [35]. If (w∗ , b∗ , α∗ ) is a saddle point for function L(w, b, α) , then w∗ is a
solution for the Objective Function. Moreover if this function is convex, the solution is
unique.
The set of necessary and sucient conditions for the existence of an optimal solution
is, according to the optimization theory with constraints, known as Karush-Kuhn-
Tucker (KKT) conditions. At the optimum point, the conditions from 3.18 till 3.22
are satised. Assuming the KKT conditions are met, we can say that the solution
(w∗ , b∗ , α∗ ) exists and is the same for both primal and dual formulation.
αi∗ ≥ 0 (3.18)
X
n
αi∗ yi = 0 (3.19)
i=1
X
n
∗
w = αi∗ yi xi (3.20)
i=1
yi (w∗ xi + b∗ ) ≥ 1 i = 1, 2, 3, ..., m (3.21)
αi∗ (yi (w∗ xi + b∗ ) − 1) = 0 i = 1, 2, 3, ..., m (3.22)
Equation 3.22 is known as KKT complementary condition and it is of special im-

portance for the results here studied. For any vector xi that lies on either hyperplane,
the relation yi (w∗ xi + b∗ ) = 1 is valid. This makes the condition 3.22 true for any
value of αi∗ > 0, i.e., the zero value from the product appears due to the fact that xi
is one vector lying on the hyperplane. These are called the Support Vectors and play
a central role on all the theory explained in this section.
Considering all the other vectors from the Input Space, out of the hyperplanes, we
have yi (w∗ xi + b∗ ) > 1. For the condition 3.22 to be met, all the Lagrange Multipliers
have to be zero, i.e., αi∗ = 0. These are called the Non-Support Vectors. Both situations
are presented in Figure 3.2.
In this way only those vectors that lie on the Cannonical Hyperplanes are the support
vectors, and these are a subset of all the vectors from the input space. This is a major
simplication on the calculations performed, as all the Non-Support Vectors will be
47
Figure 3.2: αi for sample vectors in input space
out for the determination of w∗ (Equation 3.20), and later, as it will be shown, in b∗ .
The result is the best separating Hyperplane, w∗ xi + b∗ = 0.
As for the bias b∗ , it will be found separately on each side of the hyperplane [29].For
the vectors labelled as yi = +1, the equality min(wT xi + b) = 1 is valid, as long as for
those with yi = −1 the valid equation is max(wT xi + b) = −1. Using the result from
Equation 3.13, the following relations 3.23 and 3.24 are obtained.
!
X
n
b = 1 − min αj yj (xi T xj ) , yi = +1 (3.23)
j=1
!
X
n
b = −1 − max αj yj (xi T xj ) , yi = −1 (3.24)
j=1
Summing both Equations 3.23 and 3.24, b∗ is obtained from the optimal solution α∗
(Equation 3.25).
" ! !#
1 Xn Xn
b∗ = − max α∗ yj (xi T xj ) + min αj∗ yj (xi T xj ) (3.25)
2 yi =−1 j=1 j yi =+1
j=1
Arriving at this point, the decision function from Equation 3.4 will will be dened as
in Equation 3.26 for the optimal solution. Any new vector x will be classied according
to the best hyperplane separating the two classes, represented by Equation 3.26.
48
!
X
n
f(x) = sign(w∗T x + b∗ ) ⇔ f(x) = sign αi∗ yi (xi T x) + b∗ (3.26)
i=1
It is important to note that the predictions performed with Equation 3.26 depend
only on the inner product between x and the Support Vectors as αi = 0 for all vectors
from the Input Space which are Non-Support Vectors. In this way, many of the terms
used in the sum will be zero.
3.3 Binary Classier - Soft Margins

In the case presented in the previous section, the margin constraints are hard, i.e.,
there is no possibility of being violated. In the case of soft margins it is allowed that
some vectors exist inside the margin band (Figure 3.3), which correspond to the noise
existing in real data. In this there is still one hyperplane that separates the two sets of
data with a minimum amount of errors. This means that using soft margins the data
is still linearly separable. Situations can happen that there is no linearity and those
are to addressed on next section.
Figure 3.3: SVM Principle - Binary Classication Soft Margins
The presence of noise in the data is taken into account by the introduction of non-
negative slack variables ξi into the objective function 3.9 and the constraint Equation
3.10. This new approach leads to Equations 3.27 and 3.28.
yi (wT xi + b) ≥ 1 − ξi , ξi ≥ 0 , ∀i (3.27)
" #
1 X n
min wT w + C ξi ,C > 0 (3.28)
2 i=1
49
The minimization of kwk corresponds to the maximization of the Pmargin. The new
objective function (Equation 3.28) incorporates the new term C ξi , which being
added to kwk will produce a change on the size of the margin. Considering thatPthe
whole Equation 3.28 is to be minimized, as the value of C increases, makes that ξi
has to be the smallest possible, in this way resulting in a solution with the minimum
amount of errors due to noise [30]. The value of C regulates the weight of the errors
and for this reason is known as Regularization Parameter.
Applying again the Lagrangian primal formulation to the objective function 3.28
subject to the constraints of presented in 3.27, the result is:
1 X n X n X n
L(w, b, α, ξ) = (wT w) + C ξi − αi (yi (wT xi + b) − 1 + ξi ) − ri ξi (3.29)
2 i=1 i=1 i=1
Where αi ≥ 0 and ri ≥ 0 are the Lagrange multipliers, which are positive by

denition and C > 0, previously dened.
Following the same procedure as in section 3.2, the saddle point is to be deter-
mined.The partial derivatives ∂L
∂b
and ∂w
∂L
provide the same results as in 3.12 and 3.13
respectively, ∂α results on the constraint from Equation 3.27 and nally ∂L
∂L
∂ξ
provides
the following result:
∂L
= 0 ⇔ C − αi − ri = 0 ⇔ αi = C − ri (3.30)
∂ξ
As ri ≥ 0 and C > 0 the Equation 3.30 yields always αi ≤ C . This results presents
an additional limitation to αi . In this way, αi is limited by 0 ≤ αi ≤ C which is known
as the box constraint.
Continuing to apply the same procedure as in section 3.2, the Dual Formulation
of Equation 3.29 is obtained by the replacement in this equation of all variables w,
b and ξ . The resulting formulation is in Equation 3.31, and the new corresponding
constraints presented in Equations 3.32 and 3.33.
X
n
1X
n
1 X 2
n
W(α) = αi − αi αj yi yj (xi xj ) − α (3.31)
i=1
2 i,j=1 4C i=1 i
0 ≤ αi ≤ C (3.32)
X
n
αi y i = 0 (3.33)
i=1
50
As in the previous section (3.2), this formulation will lead to the best separating
hyperplane, w∗T x + b∗ = 0 , where w∗ and b∗ are calculated after the value of αi∗ is
determined solving Equation 3.31, with constraints 3.32 and 3.33.
The value of w∗ is still provided by Equation 3.20, and the decision function 3.26 is
the same to be used with the current data. Also for this formulation, the Non-Support
Vectors are those for which αi∗ = 0. Considering the limitation for αi∗ presented in
Equation 3.32, the Support Vectors are the remaining for which 0 < αi ≤ C .
3.4 Binary Classication - Kernel Trick

The formulation presented in the previous section allows the existence of some noise
and outliers, but there are cases when the data is not separable by an hyperplane. In
this case the data is not linearly separable.
The kernel function is introduced whenever there is no possibility to separate the
data linearly through an hyperplane. It can be proved from the constraint optimization
theory that mapping the data in a higher dimensional space, a linear separation can
be achieved.
The extension from the linear to the non-linear case is done by the so-called Kernel
Trick [29].
To have an alternative representation of the data where it can be linearly separable,
a mapping function Φ(x) maps the data into another space of dierent dimension
known as Feature Space (H). Normally this is a space of higher dimension than the
Input Space. Φ(x) is for this reason called the mapping function (Equation 3.34).
The right mapping will result that the original data can be linearly separable in the
Feature Space
Φ(x) : X ∈ Rm −→ H ∈ Rp , p≥m (3.34)
Figure 3.4: Nonlinear Separable Data
In order to make use of the results presented in the previous sections (3.2 and 3.3),
where the linear separation was possible, the structure of a inner product has to be
51
dened in the Feature Space H. This will allow the direct replacement of the dot
product in the Input Space according to Equation 3.35, since the Dual formulation can
be written entirely in terms of the dot product. The fact that the same data in another
space can be linearly separable, makes easier the calculus involved and it allows the use
of the results from linear algebra in a set of data that originally was not in a suitable
conguration for the results to be used directly.
i xj −→ Φ(xi ) Φ(xj )
xT T
(3.35)
It is the dot product Φ(xi )T Φ(xj ) that is called Kernel Function, K(xi , xj ) (Equation
3.36).
K(xi , xj ) = Φ(xi )T Φ(xj ) (3.36)
All the results from the previous sections can be used, provided that the dot product
of input vectors xi xj is replaced by the corresponding dot product of the vectors in the
Feature Space, Φ(xi )Φ(xj . This is the same as replacing by the Kernel, K(xi , xj ) and
this is the core of the Kernel Trick.
Provided there is one Kernel Function that has the properties of an inner product,
it is enough to dene the Kernel and it is not necessary to know the mapping Φ(x),
as this function is implicitly dened by the Kernel. This is an extra simplication of
the algorithm, based on the fact that the inner product structure is maintained in the
Feature Space.
In this way, after the Kernel substitution, the dual formulation derived in section
3.3 (Equation 3.31) will be represented as the following Equation (3.37).
X
n
1X
n
1 X 2
n
W(α) = αi − αi αj yi yj K(xi , xj ) − α (3.37)
i=1
2 i,j=1 4C i=1 i
The solution of Equation 3.37 will yield the value for α∗ , and from this the best
separation hyperplane w∗T x+b∗ = 0 using the same results from the previous sections.
The constraints from Equations 3.32 and 3.33 are still maintained, and the decision
function presented in 3.26, becomes
!
X
n
f(z) = sign αi∗ yi K(xi , z) + b∗ (3.38)
i=1
for a new testing vector z.

There are a large number of Kernel functions that can be chosen. The most popular
are presented in the following list [36]:
52
• Linear Kernel: K(xi , xj ) = xi T xj
• Polynomial Kernel: K(xi , xj ) = (γxi T xj + r)d , γ > 0
• Radial Basis Function (RBF) Kernel: K(xi , xj ) = exp(−γkxi − xj k2 ), γ > 0
• Sigmoid Kernel: K(xi , xj ) = tanh(γxi T xj + r)
This multitude of choice for the Kernel is another advantage for using the Support
Vector Machines. In this project the tools used have dierent kernels that can be tested
with the Flight Data available, but it is general idea in the references available ( see [36]
for example), that the Radial Basis Function (RBF) Kernel is a good starting point.
53
Chapter 4
Presentation of Results
In this Chapter the methods presented in the previous chapters are going to be imple-
mented and the classication of novelty data shall be produced. The methods are:
• Input Space ±3σ (Chapter 2)
• Principal Component Analysis ±3σ (Chapter 2)
• Support Vector Machines (Chapter 3)
The set of ights that are to be used as a standard is the 354 Autoland ights
studied in Chapter 2. Out of this set a new one is produced only with those ights
within a window of ±3σ on all of its dimensions. This is a clean set that produces the
averages (µi ) and standard variations (σi ) for the new vectors to be compared with.
The gure used as a comparison for the rst two methods is represented in Equation
4.1, representing the mean distance for a new vector z. Each component of this vector
is related to the original vector x by zi = xi − µi .
v
u
u1 X m
zi2
dmed = t z ∈ Rm (4.1)
m i=1 σi2
The SVM model is to be implemented with the Software LIBSVM [32]. Its descrip-
tion, use and capabilities are fully described in Appendix E. The typical use of a SVM
algorithm involves two steps: rst, training a data set to obtain a model and second,
using the model to predict or classify the information present on a testing set. These
steps are summarised in Figure 4.1. Step #1 aims to create the model based on already
known labels. This model is then applied to Unlabelled data as in Step #2, producing
the output of Predicted Labels for the testing data. This second step is repeated as
long as there is data to test, whereas the rst step is run once to produce the model.
Several support programs and script les have been created during the course of
testing the data as a result of specic needs. These are presented in Appendix D.
54
Figure 4.1: SVM Model Creation and use
4.1 Applications of the methods to novelty data

In this section the rst application to new data will be produced and the consistency
of the methods will be evaluated.
4.2 Practical Application - Autoland Flights Year 2011

This testing will focus on all the outputs produced from the AGS procedure from
February till December 2011 (January 2011 is part of the Training Data). There is a
total of 375 Autoland ights determined in this period.
4.2.1 Input Space ±3σ Evaluation

The results obtained for this criteria are presented in Figures 4.2 and 4.3. These
correspond to the graphical representation for all the new cases of Equation 4.1.
Input Space (2011 Autolands) Input Space (2011 Autolands)
10
301
56
8
60
96
Mean Distance
Mean Distance
6
40
52
4
83
20
74
72 297
434855 78
2
169 130
124 217 288 321
19 44 64
42 67
70 91102 110123 145 165 170 210 303312 326
331342
31 4047 6371 80 92101111
495459 117125 156 173184 199 254265
246 261 276 316 332
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370
6 20 36
384553 616873
60 82 97
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255 295 315 320329 347
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0
0 100 200 300 0 100 200 300
New Input Cases New Input Cases
Figure 4.2: Input Space - 2011 Autoland Figure 4.3: Input Space - 2011 Autoland
Flights Comparison Flights Comparison (zoom)
55
4.2.2 Principal Components ±3σ Evaluation
Changing the base to the principal directions, the results are presented in Figures 4.4
and 4.5. Equation 4.1 is now calculated for the components of the new base.
Principal Component Space (2011 Autolands) Principal Component Space (2011 Autolands)
120
10
301
100
8
80
Mean Distance
Mean Distance
6
52
72
60
169
47
91
92 125 217
83 124
4
43 81
111 152 244
70 82 283
40
213 288 312

31 60
64 131 295
48 6168
44 117 149 165 297 321 345
63 90 110123 167 184 236
232 270 315
59 67747986
87 102 114
109 145 227 291 308 316
3340 7178 130
115127140
143 164 224
221 242 323 339 346
56 22 75
73 97 148157
160 280292302 318
320
96 12 23 101
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134
142 153 185 219
225 240 266 304 334
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49
54 697784 100 122 159 199 228 311 329
6 15 2835 37 4653 99
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4 1420 24 3638 50 80 93 106 113 147
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Figure 4.4: PCA Space - 2011 Autoland Figure 4.5: PCA Space - 2011 Autoland
4.2.3 SVM Evaluation

The scaling of the data and prediction are performed with the commands (see Appendix
E):
>>svm-scale -r range1 autoland2svm >autoland2svm.scale
>>svm-predict autoland2svm.scale autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.model previsao.txt
Accuracy = 90.9% (341/375) (classification)
4.2.4 Conclusions on the Obtained Results

A summary of the labelling detection according to the three methods under study is
presented next in Table 4.1.
Some conclusions shall be made from the results achieved with the current testing:
1. The Outliers are immediately identied by any of the methods. these are case56 ,
case96 , case169 and case301 (Figures 4.2 and 4.4).
2. The remaining cases are clustered for lower variances (Figures 4.3 and 4.5). There
are a large number of cases close to the limits. This eect of analysing the data
through its principal directions enhances the visibility of cases that would not be
recognised if only the input space was being checked.
3. Concerning the SVM, the model used was trained with the same set that the
remaining methods are using for performing the comparisons. It provided the
conrmation of a large number of cases detected by the PCA and not detected by
the Input Space ±3σ . There are though a number of cases that are only detected
56
Table 4.1: 2011 Autoland Flights Detection Methods Comparison
yi = −1 Findings
Vectors Label (±3σ) Label (PCA ±6σ) Label (SVM)
√
case9 √
case11 √
case31 √
case43 √
case44 √ √
case47 √ √
case48 √ √ √
case52 √
case53 √ √ √
case56 √
case60 √
case61 √ √
case64 √
case67 √
case68 √ √
case70 √ √
case72 √
case74 √
case76 √
case78 √
case81 √
case82 √ √
case83 √ √
case91 √ √
case92 √ √ √
case96 √
case111 √
case112 √
case117 √
case118 √
case124 √
case125 √
case130 √
case131 √
case149 √
case152 √
case165 √
case168 √ √ √
case169 √
case199 √
case213 √
case217 √
case228 √
case244 √
case283 √ √
case288 √
case295 √
case297 √
case300 √ √ √
case301 √
case312 √
case318 √
case321 √
case326 √
case345 √
case352 √
case374
Total 5 37 34
by the SVM (Table 4.1). These cases have been identied as being tagged with
one of the original labels PPF or PI. Being discrete (binary) signals they are not
checked by the remaining methods. Only two cases are labelled just by SVM not
being in the situation above. These are case74 and case321 which correspond to
points very close to the decision limit.
57
4.3 Practical Application - Autoland Flights Year 2009
The current set to be submitted to the dierent methods is composed of 254 new cases
corresponding to Autoland ights detected by the AGS procedure for the year of 2009.
4.3.1 Input Space ±3σ Evaluation

The results for this set of novelty data is presented in Figures 4.6 and 4.7.
Input Space (2009 Autolands) Input Space (2009 Autolands)
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Figure 4.6: Input Space - 2009 Autoland Figure 4.7: Input Space - 2009 Autoland
4.3.2 Principal Components ±3σ Evaluation

The results considering the principal components is presented in Figures 4.8 and 4.9.
Principal Component Space (2009 Autolands) Principal Component Space (2009 Autolands)
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Figure 4.8: PCA Space - 2009 Autoland Figure 4.9: PCA Space - 2009 Autoland
58
4.3.3 SVM Evaluation
The SVM evaluation produced a total of 26 cases identied with the label yi = −1.
These are presented in Table 4.2 in parallel with the reaming methods.
4.3.4 Conclusions on the Obtained Results

The ndings for the methods under test are summarized in Table 4.2.
Table 4.2: 2009 Autoland Flights Detection Methods Comparison
yi = −1 Findings
Vectors Label (±3σ) Label (PCA ±6σ) Label (SVM)
√
case2 √
case3 √
case7 √
case8 √
case11 √
case19 √
case20 √ √
case23 √
case25 √
case29 √
case30 √
case31 √
case41 √
case47 √
case55 √
case58 √
case62 √ √
case67 √ √ √
case74 √
case76 √ √
case94 √
case108 √
case113 √ √ √
case115 √
case125 √ √
case128 √
case145 √
case148 √
case150 √ √
case151 √
case154 √
case158 √ √ √
case159 √
case161 √
case165 √
case166 √
case179 √
case184 √
case189 √ √
case198 √
case201 √
case202 √
case206 √ √
case211 √
case212 √
case216 √
case221 √ √
case229 √
case231 √ √
case240 √
case241 √ √ √
case252 √ √ √
case253 √ √ √
case254
Total 6 43 26
Some conclusions from this new result are the following:
59
1. The cases that are clearly identied as being out of boundaries are case74 , case115 ,
case159 , case252 , case253 and case254 .
2. In this set of testing data, again the eect of the analysis through the PCA basis
compared to the original dimensions, highlights a certain number of cases that
would be not identied if the rotation to the principal components of the set have
not been done (Figures 4.7 and 4.9).
3. The SVM classied as yi = −1 whenever there is a PPF or PI label from the
Standard Procedure, or the case is already identied by any of the other methods.
It shows again that it is a suitable method when discrete signals are present in
the testing data.
60
Chapter 5
Conclusions and Future Work
In this work an Autoland Procedure was developed in the AGS Flight Data Analysis
Software. This procedure was based on extraction keypoints meeting certain condi-
tions during descend. The relevant parameters to be exported have been identied
and a vector of dimension 270 is created for each landing. In the same AGS procedure
the existing specications for Autoland analysis from the Aircraft Manufacturer and
former existing specications have been implemented. During the landing, the meet-
ing of certain conditions lead to a Poor Performance (PPF) or Poor Integrity (PI)
classication.
The AGS procedure produced a high dimensional matrix with outlier values present.
The problem to classify this information in an automatic way, extracting relevant
information and not loosing the legacy classications from previous methods was to be
tackled. As databases become larger it turns impracticable for a human operator to
process it and data-mining tools are each day more necessary.
On the search for possible solutions, three methods have been compared, testing
the data and tuning the methods as new results were found during the work. The
data was analysed on its original dimensions and the limits of ±3σ established to
determine the Abnormal cases. The Principal Components Analysis (PCA) performed
the analysis of the data on its principal directions, corresponding to its eigenvectors.
Here each new dimension is a linear combination of the original dimensions and are
ordered by decreasing order of variance. This new perspective of the data revealed
that the variance of the new components (dimensions) was higher than in the original
dimensions, which allowed to detect cases that became clear due to the fact that in
this new base, the correlation of the original components is part of the base. These
cases would be unnoticed if just the original base was taken into account.
In order to implement an automatic classication based on state-of-the-art method-
ologies, the Support Vector Machines (SVM) have been introduced. This is a Machine
Learning algorithm capable of classifying a large amount of data in a robust way. This
method relies on a Training Set, a set of data with known labels, in order to build a
model of the data. There is a complementarity between this method and the remaining
two, as the precision of the classication provided by the two previous methods is used
by the SVM to create the Training Set and produce a model of the data. The most
accurate the classication of the data is, the more reliable it is the model created. Once
the model is established it can be used indenitely with novelty data.
61
5.1 Conclusions on the obtained results
During this work a model of the data was created with a set of 354 Autoland ights,
and a total of 629 ights have been subsequently classied by the three methods under
study. Some conclusions on the methods used are provided next:
1. The Input Space ±3σ evaluation conducts to the detection of a very limited num-
ber of cases. For the 629 total cases, just 11 have been compliant with this criteria.
These cases proved though to be valid cases to detect corresponding to the Outliers
which are the cases where the most extreme values are present (unreal values).
They have been conrmed by the remaining methods.
2. The Primary Component Analysis enhances the correlation between the original
dimensions. Using a new base produced with a linear combination of the original
dimensions by decreasing order of variance, leads to a greater number of cases
detected. The detection is 80 cases out of 629 with the PCA.
3. The SVM was trained with the same vectors being used on the previous set as
the comparison set. This method proved to be the only one studied in this work,
capable of handling both analogue and binary data on the same set. Most of the
cases that are identied by this method correspond to the binary ags PPF or
PI activated. This makes also this method compliant with the legacy techniques
that are on the origin of this work. There was a total of 60 cases detected by this
method, out of 629, but not matching exactly the cases found by the PCA. It was
veried that the cases that PCA found and has not being followed by SVM are
cases close to the decision boundary of ±3σ . These cases may not be signicant,
but once they are identied by one of the methods it shall be labelled to be further
investigated.
4. It seems reasonable for the application under study, that the use of the complement
of the two methods PCA and SVM is the solution to have the nal labelling of
the cases. There is a complementarity of these methods that allow to detect
the maximum cases in a robust way. Making use of both methods there is a
total of 111 cases detected as Abnormal to be further investigated in a total of
629 Autolands. These are Outliers and minor drifts from the Normal average of
certain parameters. This automatic classication allowed that 518 cases have been
immediately recognized as Normal and no concern is given to these cases. The
remaining 111 are those that are labelled to be further investigated, but compared
with the original 629, this represent a workload drop of 82, 4% for the analyst.
5.2 Future Work and Developments

During this work it was produced a matching between the outputs of the AGS Au-
toland Procedure and other tools, such as the R statistical Environment and LIBSVM
Support Vector Machine Package. The studies performed allowed to draw conclusions
about the classication of each method and its capabilities, which allow the automatic
classication of any new data produced by the AGS Procedure.
Starting from the model obtained in this project, some natural extensions can be
produced, such as:
62
1. Increase the number of features (dimensions) on each vector. The features
used for obtaining the model have been based on the from Chapter 2. The vec-
tor dimension being used, was high enough to draw conclusions on multivariate
techniques without loosing the capability for the individual evaluation of each di-
mension (Histogram analysis). Using the learnings from this project a new model
with a higher number of features can be produced in such a way that most of the
full 270 dimensions from the output le of the AGS procedure are monitored.
2. Improve the standard sets. The new cases, being classied as Normal, can be
added to the Standard database to robust the base set for the rst two methods.
Any classication can be used to improve the Training set for the SVM method,
in order to improve the quality of the model.
3. Create models for each runway that is CAT III certied. For this point
to be implemented, a substantial number of ights has to be available per runway.
A good candidate for this model would be Lisbon Airport (LPPT) RWY 21, from
which are the majority of the ights.
4. Create a model for the remaining les produced by the AGS procedure.
These are for Airbus A320 eet AU T O_AP P ROACH _320.CSV for the auto-
approaches according to the classication in Figure 2.7 and
REGU LARLAN D_320.CSV for all the manual landings operated, i.e., all the
remaining ights not classied either as Autoland or Autoapproach.
Despite this project evolved with LIBSVM for the Support Vector Machines imple-
mentation, there are other packages that should be taken into account and be part of
any future developments. An incomplete list of possible tools to use is provided next:
• Matlab / Octave. Matlab has a SVM implementation on its Bioinformatics

Toolbox and the LIBSVM package can be integrated both in Matlab and Octave.
• SHOGUN. It is a Machine Learning Toolbox available under the GNU General
Public License from the ocial site http://www.shogun-toolbox.org/.
• SVMlight. This is a toolbox written in C with the implementation of Support
Vector Machines. It is freely available in http://svmlight.joachims.org/.
• Packages for R Statistics Environment. The R statistics programming lan-
guage have several add-on packages implementing SVMs. These are, e1071,
Kernlab, KlaR and SVMpath.
• PyML. It is an interactive object oriented framework for machine learning written
in Python. PyML focuses on SVMs and other kernel methods. It is supported on
Linux and Mac OS X.
• MKAD - Multiple Kernel Anomaly Detection. This package is freely avail-
able from NASA Dashlink resources site 1 and it is, up to the author's knowledge,
the only package already tested with real aircraft ight data. The multikernel
concept separates the analysis into two kernels,one for the discrete data and an-
other for the analogue data. A model for the sequence of the discrete data is also
implemented. This tool is available as a set of Matlab scripts and documentation
which can be downloaded from the site above.
1 https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/resources/330/
63
5.3 Final Considerations
In today's databases there is a large amount of data stored. This is the case of a typical
Flight Data Analysis system used in Airline's Flight Safety Departments to keep track
of any deviations from standard operation. These databases increase their size as the
processing of the data from the airline's operation occurs.
The traditional approach to the ight data analysis is by creating pre-determined
conditions, that once attained produce one Event, i.e., the report that was found one
condition beyond some established limit. This can be an over-speed, a hard-landing or
an unstabilized approach.
Having such an amount of data to analyse in a Flight Data Analysis system, data-
mining tools, such as those explored in this work, are extremely valuable to support
the analyst to draw conclusions from a large and high-dimensional set of data. The
Principal Component Analysis and the Support Vector Machines (SVM) proved to be
two robust methods for pattern recognition, and being more used everyday in dierent
areas of knowledge. These techniques have been explored in this project to evaluate
possible Abnormal cases among the set of data from the ights that was generated.
This thesis is a rst approach in TAP Portugal for using the capabilities of PCA
and SVM to the analysis of ights. It also opens the opportunity for future researches
and applications.
64
Appendix A
Flight Data Extracted from AGS

(Airbus A320 eet)
Table A.1: General Data (Aircraft)

Parameter Parameter Description A717 Rate [Hz] A429 Prim Source
FDIU/301/00
AC_TAIL Aircraft Tail Number 1/4 FDIU/302/00
FDIU/303/00
ACTYPE Aircraft Type 1/4 FDIU/304/00
ALT_STD Standard Barometric Altitude 1 ADC/203/01
DATE Flight Date Recorded 1/4 FDIU/260/00
EGT1 Exhaust Gas Temperature Eng #1 1 ECU/345/01
EGT2 Exhaust Gas Temperature Eng #2 1 ECU/345/10
FF1 Fuel Flow Engine #1 1 ECU/244/01
FF2 Fuel Flow Engine #2 1 ECU/244/10
FLTNUM1 Flight Number (Char #1 and #2) 1/4 FGC/233/00
FLTNUM4 Flight Number (Char #7 ) 1/4 FGC/236/00
GS Ground Speed 1 IRS/312/01
HEIGHTD Decision Height 1 DMC/370/01
IAS Indicated Air Speed 1 ADC/206/01
LATG Lateral Acceleration 4 SDAC/332/01
LONG Longitudinal Acceleration 4 SDAC/331/01
N11 N1 Actual Engine #1 (low rotor spd) 1 ECU/346/01
N12 N1 Actual Engine #2 (low rotor spd) 1 ECU/346/10
N21 N2 Actual Engine #1 (high rotor spd) 1 ECU/344/01
N22 N2 Actual Engine #2 (high rotor spd) 1 ECU/344/10
SAT Static Air Temperature 1 ADC/213/xx
TAS True Air Speed 1 ADC/210/01
TAT Total Air Temperature 1 ADC/211/xx
TLA1 Selected Throttle Lever Angle Eng #1 1 ECU/133/01
TLA2 Selected Throttle Lever Angle Eng #2 1 ECU/133/10
VAPP Approach Speed 1 FGC/077/00
VIB_N1FNT1 N1 Vibration Engine #1 1 EIVMU/135/01
VRTG Vertical Acceleration 8 SDAC/333/01
Table A.2: General Data (Calculated)

Calculation Control Parameter(s) Procedure description
Touch Down Corrected (TOUCH_DOWNC) Accelerations + Radio Alt Appendix B.2
Thrust Lever Detent Position Engine n TLAn Appendix B.5
Radio Altitude Rate RALT Appendix B.3
Flap and Slat Conguration (CONF) FLAP_n, SLATRW Appendix B.4
Flap and Slat Lever Position (LEVER_POSITION) FLAP_n, SLATRW Appendix B.4
Continued on next page
65
Table A.2 continued from previous page
Calculation Control Parameter(s) Procedure description
Max Brake Pressure BRAKE_Pn Appendix B.8
Time between TD and APx Disengage T, AP_EGDn Appendix B.8.1
Time between TD and AUTOLAND_ON T, AUTOLAND_ON Appendix B.8.1
Time TR Actuated T, REV_DEPLOYEDn Appendix B.8.1
Reverse Type N1n,T,REV_DEPLOYEDn Appendix B.8.2
Glide Slope Track FMA_GS_TRK, APMOD14 Appendix B.7
Landing Distance T, GS Appendix B.6
Table A.3: Key Point Flight Data - Ground Sector

ABRK_SEL_MAX AutoBrake Selection Maximum 1 BSCU/027/01 - bit 22
ABRK_SEL_MED AutoBrake Selection Medium 1 BSCU/027/01 - bit 21
ABRK_SEL_MIN AutoBrake Selection Minimum 1 BSCU/027/01 - bit 20
AUTOLAND_ON Autoland Warning ON 1 FWC/126/11 - bit 16
BRAKE_FAULT Normal Brake Fault 1 FWC/126/11 - bit 26
BRAKE_LPA Left Brake Pedal Angle 1 BSCU/331/xx
BRAKE_P1 Brake #1 Pressure 1 BSCU/300/xx
BRAKE_RPA Right Brake Pedal Angle 1 BSCU/330/xx
L2_CAP Autoland Capability CAT 2 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 16
L2_INOP Autoland Capability CAT 2 Inoperative 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 20
L2C_FMA Autoland Capability CAT 2 - FMA Display 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 23
L3FO_CAP Autoland Capability CAT 3 Fail Operational 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 18
L3FP_CAP Autoland Capability CAT 3 Fail Passive 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 17
L3FO_FMA Auto Cap CAT 3 Fail Operative - FMA Display 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 24
L3FP_FMA Auto Cap CAT 3 Fail Passive - FMA Display 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 24
L3FO_INOP Autoland Cap CAT 3 Fail Operative Inoperative 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 22
L3FP_INOP Autoland Cap CAT 3 Fail Passive Inoperative 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 20
LDG_ON_1 LH Landing Gear Compressed 1 LGCIU/021/xx - bit 13
LDGN_ON Nose Landing Gear Compressed 1 LGCIU/021/xx - bit 12
LDG_ON_2 RH Landing Gear Compressed 1 LGCIU/021/xx - bit 14
REV_DEPLOYED1 Reverser Deployed Eng #1 (GREEN) 1 DMC/270/xx - bit 13
REV_DEPLOYED2 Reverser Deployed Eng #2 (GREEN) 1 DMC/270/xx - bit 14
REV_UNLOCK_1 Reverser Unlock Eng #1 (AMBER) 1 DMC/270/xx - bit 11
REV_UNLOCK_2 Reverser Unlock Eng #2 (AMBER) 1 DMC/270/xx - bit 12
SPOIL_L2 LH Spoiler #2 Position 1 FCDC/362/xx
SPOIL_R2 RH Spoiler #2 Position 1 FCDC/372/xx
WS1 MLG Wheel Speed #1 1 BSCU/320/xx
Table A.4: Key Point Flight Data - Air Sector

ALLIGN Autopilot Align Mode 1 FGC/275/00 - bit 25
ALT_STD Standard Barometric Altitude 1 ADC/203/01
AOAL Angle of Attack System #1 1 ADC/241/01
AOAR Angle of Attack System #2 1 ADC/241/10
AP_BLW_200FT Autopilot OFF Below 200 ft 1 FWC/126/10 - bit 11
AP_EGD1 Autopilot #1 Engaged 1 DMC/276/01 - bit 13
AP_EGD2 Autopilot #2 Engaged 1 DMC/276/10 - bit 14
AP_INST_DISC Autopilot Instictive Disconnect 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 11
AP_OFF_WARN Autopilot OFF Warning 1 FWC/126/10 - bit 19
APFLARE Autopilot Flare Mode (FGC) 1 FGC/274/00 - bit 25
APGS Autopilot Glide Slope (FGC) 1 FGC/274/00 - bit 22
APMOD18 Autopilot Mode 18 - Land Track (FGC) 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 14
APTRK Autopilot TRACK (FGC) 1 FGC/274/00 - bit 20
Continued on next page
66
Table A.4 continued from previous page
AT_AFLOOR Autothrust ALPHA FLOOR Mode Displayed 1 FGC/271/00 - bit 17
AT_ASYM Autothrust ASYM Mode Displayed 1 FGC/271/00 - bit 21
AT_IDLE Autothrust IDLE Mode Displayed 1 FGC/271/00 - bit 16
AT_MCT Autothrust MCT Mode Displayed 1 FGC/271/00 - bit 12
AT_SPEED Autothrust SPEED Mode Displayed 1 FGC/271/00 - bit 19
AT_THR Autothrust THR Mode Displayed 1 FGC/271/00 - bit 15
AT_TOGA Autothrust TOGA Mode Displayed 1 FGC/271/00 - bit 11
ATH_OFF_WARN Autothrust OFF Warning 1 FWC/126/10 - bit 12
ATHID Autothrust Instictive Disconnect 1 FGC/146/00 - bit 17
ATHR_OFF_WARN Autothrust OFF Warning 1 FWC/126/10 - bit 12
ATHRA Autothrust Active 1 FGC/270/00 - bit 14
ATHRE Autothrust Engaged 1 FGC/270/00 - bit 13
ATN1 Autothrust N1 Mode 1 FGC/270/00 - bit 21
ATRETARD Autothrust RETARD Mode (FGC) 1 FGC/270/00 - bit 20
ATS_RET_MOD Autothrust RETARD Mode (DMC) 1 DMC/271/xx - bit 18
ATSPDMN Autothrust Speed/Mach Mode 1 FGC/270/00 - bit 18
CG Center of Gravity 1 FMC/077/00
CPT_MC_ON Captain Master Caution ON 1 FWC/126/11 - bit 15
CPT_MW_ON Captain Master Warning ON 1 FWC/126/11 - bit 14
DRIFT Drift Angle 1 IRS/321/01
ELEV_1 Elevator Position Left 1 FCDC/314/01
ELEV_2 Elevator Position Right 1 FCDC/334/01
FD_PITCH Flight Director PITCH 1 FGC/141/00
FD_ROLL Flight Director ROLL 1 FGC/140/00
FD_STATUS Flight Director Status 1 DMC/276/xx - bit 24
FD_1 Flight Director #1 Engaged 1 DMC/276/xx - bit 15
FD_2 Flight Director #2 Engaged 1 DMC/276/xx - bit 16
FLAP_RAW Flap Actual Position (FPPU angle) 1/2 SFCC/137/xx
FLAP_LP_0 Flap Lever Position #0 1 SDAC/046/xx - bit 17
FLAP_LP_4 Flap Lever Position #4 (FULL) 1 SDAC/046/xx - bit 21
FM_FWC FWC Flight Phases 1 FWC/126/01
FMA_LG_FLARE Autopilot Flare Mode (Displayed) 1 DMC/302/01 - bit 25
FMA_LAT_LANDTK Autopilot Land Track Mode 1 DMC/300/01 - bit 14
FMA_LAT_LOCTRK FMA Lat LOC TRK Mode active 1 DMC/301/xx - bit 14
FMA_LG_GS FMA Longitudinal G/S Mode Active 1 DMC/302/xx - bit 22
FMA_LG_TRK FMA Longitudinal TRK Mode Active 1 DMC/302/xx - bit 20
FO_MC_ON First Ocer Master Caution ON 1 FWC/126/11 - bit 23
FO_MW_ON First Ocer Master Warning ON 1 FWC/126/11 - bit 22
FPA Flight Path Angle 2 IRS/322/01
FPAC Flight Path Acceleration 4 IRS/323/xx
GSDEV1_MDDM ILS Glide Slope System #1 1 DMC/174/01
GSDEV2_MDDM ILS Glide Slope System #2 1 DMC/174/10
GW1KG Actual Gross Weight System #1 1 FMC/075/00
HEAD_MAG Magnetic Heading 1 IRS/320/01
ILS1_FREQ ILS #1 Tuned Frequency 1/4 DMC/033/01
ILS2_FREQ ILS #2 Tuned Frequency 1/4 DMC/033/10
INR_MK ILS Inner Marker 1 DMC/274/xx - bit 15
IVVR Baro-Inertial Vertical Speed 4 IRS/365/01
LDG_SELUP Landing Gear Selector UP 1 LGCIU/020/xx - b14
LDG_SELDW Landing Gear Selector DOWN 1 LGCIU/020/xx - b29
LOC1_MDDM ILS Localiser System #1 1 DMC/173/01
LOC2_MDDM ILS Localiser System #2 1 DMC/173/10
MAS_MAR Master Warning 1 FWC/126/11 - bit 14
MID_MK ILS Middle Marker 1 DMC/274/xx - bit 14
OUT_MK ILS Outer Marker 1 DMC/274/xx - bit 13
PITCH Pitch Angle 4 IRS/324/01
PITCH_CPT Side-Stick Pitch Command CAPT 2 FCDC/305/xx
PITCH_FO Side-Stick Pitch Command FO 2 FCDC/306/xx
PTCR Body Axis Pitch Rate 4 IRS/326/xx
RALTD1 Radio Altitude System #1 4 DMC/164/01
RALTD2 Radio Altitude System #2 4 DMC/164/10
ROLL Roll Angle 2 IRS/325/01
ROLL_CPT Side-Stick Roll Command CAPT 2 FCDC/301/xx
ROLL_FO Side-Stick Roll Command FO 2 FCDC/302/xx
ROLR Body Axis Roll Rate 2 IRS/327/xx
ROLLOUT Autopilot Rollout Sub-Mode 1 DMC/301/01 - bit 26
RUDD Rudder Position 2 SDAC/312/00
RUDPP Rudder Pedal Position 2 FCDC/304/01
RUDT Rudder Trim 1 FAC/313/00
SLATRW Slat Actual Position 1 SFCC/127/01
SPOIL_GND_ARM Ground Spoilers Armed 1 FCDC/043/xx - bit 27
STAB Stabiliser Position 1 FCDC/315/01
YAW Body Axis Yaw Rate 2 IRS/330/xx
WIN_SPDR Wind Speed 1 IRS/315/01
WIN_DIRR Wind Direction 1 IRS/316/01
67
68
Appendix B
Additional Procedures
In this Appendix several procedures are presented, with results and/or information
that are necessary at some step during this project. The information in the following
sections supports the main procedure from this project presented in Apeendix C.
B.1 Wind Component Calculation

The wind component is one auxiliary calculation based on velocity triangle (Fig B.1).
Once the aircraft is airborne it suers the wind force applied, and a drift angle, δ ,
appears between the True Airspeed and Ground Speed Vectors. This situation is valid
if there is no side-slip angle. This is the angle normally known as β , which is the
−−→ \ ). In this
dierence between the direction of vector T AS and the Heading angle (HDG
case β = 0.
From Fig B.1, we get the relation:
−→ −−→ −−→
GS = T AS + W S (B.1)
And the wind components are:
W IN D_COM P = GS · cos(δ) − T AS (B.2)
W IN D_CROSS = GS · sin(δ) (B.3)
In this way, we can measure the Tail Wind or Head Wind, depending on the sign of
the WIND_COMP.
W IN D_COM P > 0 → T AIL_W IN D = W IN D_COM P (B.4)
69
Figure B.1: Velocity Triangle
W IN D_COM P < 0 → HEAD_W IN D = W IN D_COM P (B.5)
Equations B.1 to B.5 are valid if the aircraft is airborne. As soon as it touches the
ground it is mechanically connected to the ground and the drift angle is zero (δ = 0).
In this case Equation B.2 is simplied to:
W IN D_COM P = GS − T AS (B.6)
and Equations B.4 and B.5 maintain its validity.
B.1.1 AGS code for Wind Components Calculation
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// WIND COMPONENT AND CROSS WIND
// =============================
// If aircraft on ground
//the TAS value only appears when GS>60knot
IF ((LDG_ON_1=1 OR LDG_ON_2=1 OR LDGN_ON=1) AND TAS # 0) THEN
70
WIN_COMP=GSC-TAS
WIN_CROSS=0
ENDIF
// A/C in the AIR

IF (FM_FWC>=5 AND FM_FWC<=7) THEN
WIN_COMP=GSC*COS(DRIFT*PI/180)-TAS
WIN_CROSS=GSC*SIN(DRIFT*PI/180)
ENDIF
IF (WIN_COMP>0) THEN TAIL_WIND=WIN_COMP ELSE TAIL_WIND=0 ENDIF

IF (WIN_COMP<0) THEN HEAD_WIND=WIN_COMP ELSE HEAD_WIND=0 ENDIF
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
B.2 Touch Down Point Determination

The Touch-Down point is considered when the Main Landing Gear (MLG) touches
the ground. For the analysis of the landing or autoland, there are metrics that need
this point to be determined the closest to the reality. Such measurements as Times
from Threshold (see section B.6)to Touch-down has to have both points correctly de-
termined. For the sink rate at Touch-Down (see section B.3) it is a must to have this
point correctly determined.
The ight data presented in this section, is from one Airbus A321 landing.
The parameters available on the datastream recorded will be used as clues to de-
termine the real Touch-Down point. Studies on this matter can be found in [37] and
[38].
The methods described in the reports above are based on:
• Air/Ground Squat Switch

• Normal and Longitudinal Accelerations
• Ground Spoiler Activation
The most direct parameters to determine the Touch-Down point are the Landing
Gear Squat-Switch signals, which are named for the A320 eet as LDG_ON_1 and
LDG_ON_2 for the Left and Right sides of the MLG (Table A.3). There is a delay
on the indication from these signals which makes this indication less accurate as others
that will be described in this section. For some applications, where the level of accuracy
is not necessary, this indications can be used.
In the case where a more precise denition of Touch-Down is necessary, such as the
landings for this report, these signals does not provide the precision needed. There are
several reasons why this happens. First, the sampling rate of those parameters is 1 Hz,
which limits to one second the granularity of the determination of the Touch-Down
point. Second the squat switch is pressed after the shock absorber from the landing
gear travels some distance when it is compressed during landing. At the time the
switch is activated, the Touch-Down point already occurred some time before. At last
it is not unusual that the Right LG and the Left LG from the MLG do not happen at
the same time, which introduces another factor for inaccuracy of this signal.
71
Another way to determine the Touch-Down, is from the normal and longitudinal
accelerations. These are presented in Figs B.2 and B.3. Studies in [37] and [38] indicate
that the point where the MLG touches the ground is when the normal acceleration
starts to raize for the st time (Fig B.2) or when the longitudinal acceleration suers
a peak down, more precisely in the beginning of this peak (Fig B.3). In the gures
it is represented the local maximum and minimum respectively. Both correspond to
reaction forces from the ground contact, which is the base of the assumption that the
Touch-Down has occurred before these local extremes.
1.3
VRTG [G]
1.25
1.2
1.15
1.1
1.05
0.95
0.9
0.85 First Max VRTG
0.8
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Figure B.2: Normal Acceleration at Touch-Down
0.15
0.1 LONG [G]
0.05
−0.05
−0.1
−0.15
First Min Peak LONG
−0.2
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160
Figure B.3: Logitudinal Acceleration at Touch-Down
Despite the Touch-Down can be visualised in the graphics of the accelerations, the
use of these parameters for its determination present some problems that make it
dicult to determine the Touch-Down out of the accelerations. The landing can be
soft, and the rst peak of normal acceleration can be easily confused with the peaks
that necessarily will appear after after the Touch-Down. Also, as stated above, this
peak corresponds to the ground reaction force, which occurs after the Touch-Down
itself. This makes dicult to use normal acceleration to determine Touch-Down for all
the ights processed in an automatic way.
To overcome the normal acceleration limitations, in [37], this quantity was derivated
creating a new parameter named Jerk . As discussed before, the dierentiation induces
72
noise, and a ltering algorithm has to be applied to reduce this behaviour (see section
B.3.1). Despite this is a valid method, it introduces additional calculations without the
warranty that it will become immune to noise. This is why it will not be considered in
this work for Touch-Down determination.
The longitudinal acceleration will be considered in the nal algorithm, as the nega-
tive peak is normally present even in soft landings. Nevertheless, it is not a standalone
process for determination.
In Figures B.4 and B.5 other possibilities of determining Touch-Down are explored.
The characteristic of the Radio Altimeters also used in Section B.6, state that Radio
Altitude is measuring the height between the ground and the MLG point closest to the
ground. From the calibration process during the installation of the Radio Altimeters
(RAs) and system conception, this is true provided θ < 6◦ which is normally the case.
This means that in the exact moment where the Aircraft (A/C) touches the ground,
there will be a Radio Altitude (RA) equal to zero (see Fig B.27).
The other parameters in Figs B.4 and B.5 are the squat switches and the speed
of the wheels from the MLG. From these images some interesting conclusions can be
taken:
• All the wheels from the MLG start rotating at the same time for this landing,
and this matches the time when the Left Hand (LH) and Right Hand (RH) squat
switches from the MLG are active.
• From Fig B.5 there are 6 samples separating the last RA that passes through zero
and the activation of the squat switches. This data is from the interpolated 8 Hz
le dened in Table ??, which means that there are 6/8seconds separating the
two measurements in the gure.
• Once the activation of the squat switch (Landing Gear ON) is recorded at 1 Hz,
the activation in the gures just state that at it assumes the value one, the MLG
touched the ground during the last second. From the previous item the Radio
Altitudes crossing are within the second delay from the squat switches.
• RA is a measurement from an electronic emission and reception. There are no
mechanical parts involved to produce any delay. Both Radio Altitude parameters
are sampled at 4 Hz, which multiplies by 4, the possibility of nding Touch-Down
within 1 second of sampling from MLG squat switches.
A nal comparison between the RA determination for Touch-Down, and the points
that could be found with VRTG, LONG and MLG Squat Switch are presented in Fig-
ures B.6, B.7 and B.8. The origin of these gures is the Touch-Down point determined
by the RA and each x division corresponds to 1/8 sec.
The MLG actuation occurs 7 samples after the RA (Fig B.8) and from Figures B.6
and B.7 the Touch-Down is recognised 3 samples after the RA, i.e., when the transition
starts. There is no way to know which is the real Touch-Down point, but the maximum
error that can appear is 3/8 second.
Considering the points above, the algorithm for Touch-Down determination will use
primarily the radio altitude zero crossing, which is the most acurate result studied,
and as backup both the longitudinal acceleration and squat switch activation in case
73
60
RALT1 [ft]
50 RALT2 [ft]
Wheel Speed (MLG)
Left and Right LG (MLG)
40
30
20
10
−10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Figure B.4: Other possible parameters for Touch-Down determination
25
20 RALT1 [ft]
RALT2 [ft]
Wheel Speed (MLG)
15 Left and Right LG (MLG)
10
−5
10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
Figure B.5: Other parameters - detail
1.25
1.2
1.15
1.1
1.05
0.95 Normal Acceleration − VRTG [G]
0.9
0.85
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Figure B.6: VRTG Variation on Touch-Down (Origin = RALT TD Point)
there is a failure on the radio altitude parameters. The code for this procedure in
AGS is listed on section B.2.1. This code produces a logic one value for the variable
TOUCH_DOWNC (which stands for Touch Down Corrected), whenever the Touch-
Down is determined. Any of the 3 methods can be used to this calculation. The
code also provides which was the method used for Touch-Down determination, by the
means of a ag identifying each condition (parameters FLAG_RA, FLAG_LG and
74
0.04
Longitudinal Acceleration [G]
0.03
0.02
0.01
−0.01
−0.02
−0.03
−0.04
−0.05
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Figure B.7: LONG Variation on Touch-Down (Origin = RALT TD Point)
1
Right and Left LG (MLG)
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Figure B.8: MLG Squat Switch (Origin = RALT TD Point)
FLAG_LAC).
B.2.1 AGS code for Touch Down determination
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Procedure P606AP - Touch-Down Determination
// Created : Jun 2011
// Rate: 8 Hz
// Database: 10344
//
// Modification History:
// Modif Date By Details
// 16 16 JUN 11 HM Procedure created from P8352MP
// 17 20 Jun 11 HM RALT = 1st criteria / LND Gear and Long Accel
// backup criterias. Flags to determine which
// criteria was used for Touch-Down determination
IF (RALFO1 < 500 AND RALFO1 > -4) THEN

IF ((RALT1DC<10 OR RALT2DC<10) AND FM_FWC=7 AND STEPTD=0)THEN
IF (RALT1DC<=0 AND RALT2DC<=0) THEN // Main TD criteria

STEPTD=1
FLAG_RA =1
ELSE // Landing Gear Criteria
75
IF ((LDG_ON_1(-0.125)=0 AND LDG_ON_1=1) OR (LDG_ON_2(-0.125)=0 AND LDG_ON_2=1) ) THEN
STEPTD=1
FLAG_LG =1
ELSE // Longitudinal Acceleration Criteria
IF ((LONG(-0.125)>=0 AND LONG<0)) THEN
STEPTD=1
FLAG_LAC =1
ELSE
STEPTD=0
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDIF
ENDIF
IF (STEPTD(-0.125)=0 AND STEPTD=1) THEN

TOUCH_DOWNC=1
ELSE
TOUCH_DOWNC=0
ENDIF
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
B.3 Baro-Inertial Vertical Speed and Radio Altitude Rate

The determination of the vertical velocity of one aircraft is of major importance to
have one assessment of the loads that it suers during ight. As it is stated in [38]:
A major contributor to the landing load is the vertical velocity at Touch-Down
There are though specic concerns for the calculation of the vertical speed and its
presentation on the cockpit. These issues will be addressed next.
In this section the data from one landing in Lisbon Airport (LPPT), Runway 03
will be used. This is a ight from TAP's A330 eet which is the only one on the date
when this report is being written where Radio Altitude Rate recorded. The need for
this parameter will be described during this section.
The altitudes, barometric and radio, for this landing are presented in Fig B.9.
3500
3000 ALT_STD [ft]

RALTD1 [ft]
RALTD2 [ft]
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Touch Down
−500
0 500 1000 1500
Figure B.9: Radio and Baro Altitudes - Landing
76
The vertical velocity, is a parameter that is available in the cockpit as a primary
information for the ight. It is present on Airbus eets on a display known as PFD
which is available both for Capt and FO (Fig B.10).
Figure B.10: Vertical Speed - PFD Indication
The determination of vertical velocity is part from de integration of the normal

acceleration from the Z accelerometer of the IRS system, which is known as Inertial
Vertical Velocity (IVV), and a damping feedback loop using static pressure from the
pitot-static system. It is used the barometric altitude for this loop. The accurate name
for the vertical speed presented on Fig B.10, is Baro-Inertial vertical speed, due to this
composition of barometric and inertial parts. This approach allows to get the best of
each system, i.e., IR has a good response in dynamic manoeuvres and the stability of
barometric altitude allows the drifts from IR to be corrected.
This composition for vertical speed, is very stable, and the measurements of the
recorded parameter (IVVR) are plotted in Fig B.11.
200
−200
−400
−600
−800
−1000
−1200 IVVR [ft/min] Touch Down
−1400
0 500 1000 1500
Figure B.11: Baro-Inertial Vertical Velocity for a Landing in LPPT (RWY 03)
Keeping in mind that it is the value of vertical velocity at Touch-Down that is to

be determined, it is clear from Fig B.10 that in the situation when the Aircraft is
close to the ground, the baro-inertial vertical speed signal (IVVR) is corrupted. This
corresponds to the ground eect that aects the barometric part of baro-inertial vertical
speed. As can be seen there is a signicant amount of noise in the neighbourhood of
77
Touch-Down, which makes baro-inertial vertical velocity a questionable measurement
to determine at this point. These variations induced by the ground eect can be seen
in more detail in Fig B.12, displaying IVVR for a barometric altitude below 300ft.
−100
IVVR [ft/min]
−200
−300
−400
−500
−600
−700
Touch Down
−800
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Figure B.12: Baro-Inertial Vertical velocity (ALT_STD < 300 ft)
150
RALT_RATE (DMU)[ft/sec]
100
50
−50
−100
Touch Down
−150
0 500 1000 1500
Figure B.13: Radio Altitude Rate (DMU Computed)
The other option to get the sink rate value at Touch-Down, is through the Radio
Altitude Rate. As mentioned before the landing under consideration has this parameter
recorded, which is plotted in Fig B.13. This is an internal computation from the DMU
or acFDIMU (see Section 1.2 for system description).
Whenever a parameter such as Radio Altitude (or any other) is dierentiated, there
is a signicant amount of noise induced by the algorithm applied. As it is documented
in [37] and [38], after the dierentiation a smoothing lter has to be applied in order
to reduce the noise previously introduced.
Airbus Algorithm is documented in Aircraft Maintenance Manual (AMM) [39]. It
is based on a Kalman Filter technique and the output is plotted in Fig B.13. Some
comments on this graphic are the following:
• Radio Altitude Rate does not provide correct values of Vertical Speed when there
are ground irregularities below the ight path. Those are interpreted as climbs or
descends inappropriately
78
• From the previous item, just for at terrain the value of RALT Rate can be
interpreted as Sink Speed. In the ight under study in this section this happens
below a standard altitude of 300ft approximately, and the nal part of the graphic
can be used for the purpose of determining sink rate.
• Despite there is an amount of ltering, the variations on this parameter are sig-
nicant. Some comparisons with other ltering techniques will be studied.
To gure out the best way to get the sink rate, other parameters have been calcu-
lated:
dRALT D1(t)
RALT RC1 = (B.7)
dt
The value determined with B.7, is the direct dierentiation of Radio Altitude. As
referred before, any method used in this calculation induces noise that has to be cleaned
out. For this purpose there is a function in AGSTM , named F_NOISE() that will be
applied to parameter RALTRC1, resulting RALTRC2. A second method of noise
reduction will be implemented, known as Gaussian Smoothing. Studies with the use
of this method can be found in [40], and a brief explanation is in B.3.1.
According to AGSTM documentation, the function F_NOISE() is dened as in Equa-
tion B.8, where N RV is the input parameter and F O is the output, corresponding to
the smoothed parameter.
1
F O = OF V + · (N RV − OF V ) (B.8)
3
Where:
• FO → Filtered Output
• OFV → Old Filtered Value
• NRV → New Raw Value
Both methods are applied to RALTRC1 parameter resulting in the signals presented
in Figs B.14 and B.15.
At this stage, there are three methods for ltering that can be selected. These are:
• RALT_RATE (DMU Computed) - Fig B.13

• F_NOISE() from AGS - Fig B.14
• Gaussian Smooting - Fig B.15
A comparison between these methods are presented in Fig B.16 for the whole landing
under study, and Fig B.17 for an altitude standard lower than 200 ft (ALT_STD <
79
300
RALTRC1 [ft/s] (AGS)
RALTRC2 [ft/s] (AGS)
200
100
−100
−200
−300
Touch Down
−400
0 500 1000 1500
Figure B.14: Noise Reduction with F_NOISE()
300
RALTRC1 (AGS) [ft/s]
GAUSS(RALTRC1) [ft/s]
200
100
−100
−200
−300
Touch Down
−400
0 500 1000 1500
Figure B.15: Noise Reduction with Gaussian Smoothing
100
RALTR [ft/s] (DMU)
−100
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
100
RALTRC2 [ft/s]
−100
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
100
−100
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
Figure B.16: Comparison of the three smoothing methods
200ft). These gures help with the conclusion for determining the best method for sink
rate determination.
As a rst conclusion, the RALTR (DMU) despite being calculated on the aircraft
has some inconvenient to be considered. It keeps a large amount of high frequencies
80
2
RALTRC2 [ft/s]
0
RALTR [ft/s] (DMU)
−2
−4
−6
−8
−10
−12
−14 Touch Down
−16
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Figure B.17: Three Possible Mesurements of Sink Rate at Touch-Down
variations and the it is recorded at a 1 Hz sampling rate compared to the other two
determinations that are based in Radio altitude sampled at 4 Hz. From this last
limitation, one can see that the value from RALTR (DMU) is zero, when Touch-Down
is determined, i.e., the other calculations have 4 values calculated within each one
available from the DMU.
The gures B.16 and B.17 also show that RALTRC2 based on F_NOISE() function
from AGS applied to the Radio Altitude dierential, has a similar smoothing capability
than the previous method. It can though be used when Touch-Down is determined,
despite the variations of RALTRC2 are high in the neighbourhood of this point.
The best method to be considered is the Gaussian Smoothing which presents a
soft line, going along with the trend of the other two methods and in the vicinity of
Touch-Down there is not a great amount of signal variation.
B.3.1 Gaussian Smoothing

The name for this smoothing algorithm is after the bell curve from the Gaussian func-
tion. It will be used to weight each new calculated value.
For a function x(t), the convolution on t0 is a function ξ(t0 ) done by (Eq B.9):
Z
ξ(t0 ) = x(t) · g(t − t0 )dt (B.9)
This Equation is used for continuous parameters. For sampled parameters (discrete)
the following equation applies (Eq B.10) in a vicinity ∆T of each point t0 calculated.
X
ξ(t0 ) = x(t) · g(t − t0 ) (B.10)
The function g(t − t0 ) is the weight assigned to each new calculation. This function
is chosen in a way that the closest t is to t0 , the highest is the weight calculated. The
81
Gaussian bell shaped curve is the suited function for g(t − t0 ), as after deciding which
is the σ to be used, the values decrease weight as the distance to the current sample
increases.
In this way, g(t − t0 ) is dened as:
(t−t0 )2
g(t − t0 ) = N · e− 2.σ 2 (B.11)
g(t − t0 ) shall be normalised, i.e., the value of N ) in Equation B.11 will be the one
that makes the sum on all calculated points equal to one.
The standard deviation, σ , corresponds to the lter size. The largest this value, the
more points contribute to the calculation and the lter will be less sensitive to signal
uctuations. This behaviour is well exemplied in gures B.18,B.19 and B.20. The
peak value has inuence on the ltered output for σ = 10, due to the fact that the
bell curve is more open for this value and the peak value is considered on more distant
points of the calculation. Any choice which is made for σ , performs the weighting of
the function with past and future values. This is a Non-Causal Filter.
A compromise shall be established for deciding which σ to use for calculations on
this section. Both values of σ = 2 and σ = 4 provide good results for the trend line.
As an option, it is used σ = 4 for the calculations in this section, due to the results
provided with this value and presented in this section.
Another compromise is obtained from testing the results which are presented in the
graphics of this section. the vicinity of the convolution presented in Equation B.10, has
to be assigned. The rst code produced in Matlab included all the samples presented
in a vector. This is a large amount of calculations, and despite it produced results, it
took a long processing time to nish. From the nature of the bell curve itself, we know
that the side values from both sides of the curve will contribute with a negligible value
to the convolution of Eq B.10.
Testing the values the conclusion was that 10 samples each side could be used with
σ = 4, providing similar results as the total amount of samples. For this reason a total
of 20 samples (±10) is being used in code presented in B.3.2.
Figure B.18: Gaussian Smooth - Example with σ = 10
82
Considering the ight under study in this section, the comparison of the ltered
parameters with the original diferential of radio altitude without any ltering (RAL-
TRC1) can be seen in Figs B.21 and B.22. These gures indicate that the Gaussian
smoothing algorithm is the one best suited for the purpose of removing the noise, which
is presented as high frequencies variations in the gures.
20
10
−10
−20
−30
−40
−50
RALTRC1 [ft/s]
−60 GAUSS(RALTRC1) [ft/s]
Touch Down
RALTRC2 [ft/s]
−70
0 20 40 60 80 100 120
Figure B.21: Smoothing Methods Comparison
83
5
RALTRC1 [ft/s]
RALTRC2 [ft/s]
0
−5
−10
−15
Touch Down
−20
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Figure B.22: Smoothing Comparison - TD area
B.3.2 Matlab code for Gaussian Smoothing
%
% Gaussian Smoothing of RALTRC1 = dRALTD1/dt
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
N = size(raltrc1);
for i=1:N(1),
t(i) = i;
end;
sigma = 4;
for j= 11:(N(1)-10),
t0=t(j);
soma(j)=0;
sumgauss=0;
k = j -10;
for i= 1:20,
sumgauss = sumgauss + exp((-1)*((t0-t(k))^2)/(2*sigma^2));
k = k + 1;
end;
%
k = j -10;
for i= 1:20,
weight = exp((-1)*((t0-t(k))^2)/(2*sigma^2)) / sumgauss;
soma(j)=soma(j)+raltrc1(k)*weight;
k = k + 1;
end;
end;
% First 10 values of the vector are not filtered -> replace the zeros with original values
%
soma(1:10) = raltrc1(1:10);
%
% End of Gaussian Smoothing
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
84
B.4 Flaps/Slats Conguration
Flaps and Slats are the mechanisms installed on aircraft to produce lift augmentation.
These are surfaces installed on the trailing and leading edges of the wing respectively.
Whenever there is one actuation of the Flaps/Slats Lever (Fig. B.23) some amount of
surfaces extension is produced. Each detent position leads to the angles described in
Table B.1.
Figure B.23: Flaps/Slats Lever
Table B.1: Flaps/Slats Position Conversion
Aircraft Settings AGS Parameters

Lever Slats Flaps Indication CONF FP_LP_0 FP_LP_1 FP_LP_2 FP_LP_3 FP_LP_4
Position angle angle on ECAM
#0 0◦ 0◦ 0 1 0 0 0 0
#1 18 ◦ 0◦ 1 1 0 1 0 0 0
#1 18 ◦ 10 ◦ 1+F 2 0 1 0 0 0
#2 22 ◦ 15 ◦ 2 3 0 0 1 0 0
#3 22 ◦ 20 ◦ 3 4 0 0 0 1 0
F U LL 27 ◦ 35 ◦ FULL 5 0 0 0 0 1
There is a speed protection associated with the position #1 of the lever position,
which allows Flaps to extend to 10 ◦ when an Indicated Airspeed is below 210 Knots
in order to protect the surface from structural damage. If the speed drops below 100
Knots teh aps extend automatically to 10 ◦ , i.e., position 1+F, in order that lift can
be guaranteed despite the low speed of the aircraft.
B.5 Thrust Lever Data

Engine power is controlled in each Engine through the Throttle Levers (Fig. B.24).
The power set is produced either manually or automatically. In the rst case there
is the manual control of the levers according to the needs of the pilot. The second
case, the auto-thrust is active, and one of its modes commands the power applied to
the engine. Being part of the y-by-wire concept of Airbus airplanes, the throttles
are connected to a mechanical articial feel unit, which replicates the feeling when the
levers are manually actuated. There is also the possibility to disengage the auto-thrust
85
pressing an instinctive disconnect button (red button in Fig. B.24). This signal is
recorded as ATHID (Table A.4).
Figure B.24: Airbus A320 Engine Throttle Levers
Figure B.25: Throttle Positions - Detents
There is a correspondence between the Thrust Lever angle measured and its detent
position. This is important to determine, as in most of the situations the detent position
of the throttle is more relevant than the angle itself. This deciding is described in Fig
B.25 and Table B.2.
Table B.2: Angle to Position Conversion
Thrust Lever Angle

Min Max Nominal Position # Description
< −18 ◦ −20 ◦ 0 FULL REVERSE
−18 ◦ −5 ◦ −6 ◦ 1 IDLE REVERSE
−5 ◦ 18 ◦ 0◦ 2 IDLE
18 ◦ 28 ◦ 25 ◦ 3 CLIMB
28 ◦ 40 ◦ 35 ◦ 4 FLX-MCT
> 40 ◦ 45 ◦ 5 TOGA
86
B.6 Threshold Crossing
The method used to determine the Threshold crossing is described in [37] (pag. 13),
and is valid whenever the approach runway is equipped with an ILS, from where a sta-
ble glide slope signal is measured. The geometry represented in Fig B.26, DT H is the
distance on the runway between the glide-slope antenna and the point corresponding
to the Threshold of 50ft, i.e., DT H = 50/ tan(3◦ ) = 954f t.
Figure B.26: Threshold Geometry
Figure B.27: Aircraft Geometry
The calculations in this section assume that Radio Altitude is measuring the height
between the ground and the MLG point closest to the ground. This is true provided
θ < 6◦ due to the calibration process of the Radio Altimeter during its installation.
Also, the reception point of the Glide-Slope signal is located inside the radome of the
aircraft where the antenna is installed. Having Fig B.27 based on a CAD drawings for
each Airbus eet, LGS and VGS can be determined. The values are presented on Table
B.3.
From Fig B.27 and Table B.3, we have the relations:
87
Table B.3: Aircraft Dimensions
A319 A320 A321 A330 A340
[ft] [m] [ft] [m] [ft] [m] [ft] [m] [ft] [m]
49.71 15.15 54.95 16.75 68.90 21 90.88 27.70 102.17 31.14
9.94 3.03 9.77 2.98 9.84 3.00 17.22 5.25 17.32 5.28
LGS
VGS
hGS = hr + H1 + H2 ⇔ hGS = hr + VGS · cos(θ) + LGS · sin(θ) (B.12)
The variables are described in table B.4.

Table B.4: Quantities in Figs B.26 and B.27
Radio Altitude
Height of Glide Slope Antenna
hr
Flight Path Angle

hGS
Glide Slope Deviation

γ
Speed Vector
∆GS
Threshold
v
Longitudinal Dimension from MLG to GS

TH
Vertical Dimension from MLG to GS

LGS
Threshold Distance B.13

VGS
Distance GS emission/reception B.14

DTH
DGS
The geometries presented allow to determine when the aircraft passed over the
threshold point provided there is a valid ILS signal. Equations B.13 and B.14 perform
this calculation assuming that there is a 3◦ slope from the ILS. This is the most common
situation.
50
DT H = = 954f t (B.13)
tan(3◦ )
hGS
DGS = (B.14)
tan(∆GS + 3◦ )
The aircraft is passing over the threshold when DGS = DT H .
All the quantities in this section are calculated in AGSTM for the development of this
work.
B.6.1 AGS code for Threshold Crossing Computation
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Procedure P631AP - Threshold Crossing Computation
// Created : Sept 2010
// Rate: 8 Hz
// Database: 10344
88
//
// Modification History:
// Modif Date By Details
// 29 29 Jun 2011 HM Threshold Crossing Code for A320fam fleet
//
//
//
// Determinação do Treshold
IF (FM_FWC=7 OR FM_FWC=8) THEN // Initial condition for TH Determination
IF (RALFO1>=(-5) AND RALFO1<=900) THEN

IF (AC_TYPE = 319) THEN
HGS = (49.7047)*SIN(PITCH*PI/180) + (9.9388)*COS(PITCH*PI/180) + RALTD1
DGS = HGS / TAN(((0.36*GSDEV1_MDDM/87.5)+3)*(PI/180))
ENDIF

ENDIF

ENDIF
ENDIF
// Treshold crossing
//
IF (DGS(-0.125)>=DTH AND DGS<DTH AND TRESH=0) THEN
TRESH = 1
ENDIF
ENDIF //Initial condition
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
B.7 Localiser and Glide-Slope Information

Localiser and Glide-Slope parts of ILS system are presented in the cockpit as dots out
of a center point. The lateral deviation corresponds to the localiser (LOC), and the
vertical to the glide-slope (G/S). It is a precious help for visual landings to be per-
formed, when the aircraft is controlled manually. It is though the autopilot behaviour
that will be the focussed in this section.
In this way the combination of LOC and G/S denes a ramp to which the aircraft
is "attached" when the autopilot modes are triggered to control the aircraft to follow
LOC and G/S signals emmited from the ground. On normal circumstances there is
a rst step, which is called the Capture (CAP) when the aircraft autopilot positions
itself in order to make both the LOC and G/S signals be without any deviation, either
lateral or vertical. On a A320 eet both LOC and G/S are captured around 4000ft
AGL, but this can depend on the real physical conditions of the ight.
89
Once both LOC and G/S are captured, the autopilot enters another mode called
TRACK, and there is on the FMA the presentation of both LOC TRK and GS TRK.
When an altitude of ≈ 400ft AGL is attained, LOC TRK and GS TRK merge with
each other, and a new mode named LAND TRK appears on the FMA. This logic can
be derived both from the avionic unit that displays this information on the cockpit
displays, the DMC, or from the source of this data, the FGC (Part of the FMGC on
A320).
B.7.1 G/S and LOC Track

The Glide Slope Track mode is one of the autopilot modes displayed on the FMA, and
is derived from the recorded parameters:
• FMA_LG_GS 1
• FMA_LG_TRK
with the following logic:

F M A_GS _T RK = (F M A_LG_GS).AN D.(F M A_LG_T RK)
On the other hand the LOC Track is given in a straightforward way out of the
datastream from the DMC computer. It is recorded in the following parameter:
• FMA_LAT_LOCTRK 2
B.7.2 Localizer and Glide-Slope Units

The dot unit is a easy way to add this information to a ADI Instrument, which is
incorporated in the PFD in Airbus eets that are studied on this work. The original
units come from the avionics equipments involved on the processing of the signals and
can be µA or DDM (Dierence of Depth of Modulation)
The correspondence between the dierent units is the following:
Localiser
1dot = 77.5mDDM = 75µA
A deviation from the centerline of 1 deg corresponds to 1 dot of LOC indication.
Glide-Slope
1dot = 87.5mDDM = 75µA
A deviation from the centerline of 0.36 deg corresponds to 1 dot of G/S indication.
B.8 Calculations Performed After Touch-Down

The Autoland procedure presented in Appendix C, several quantities are determined
after the Touch-Down point is determined. In this section some of the calculations
1 see Tab A.4
2 idem
90
performed are presented.
B.8.1 Time calculations

Table B.5: Time calculations during landing
∆ T Description
∆T_LT Time between Landing Track and Touch-Down
∆T_100 Time between RALT = 100ft and Touch-Down
∆T_FL Time between Flare Mode and Touch-Down
∆T_AL Time between Allign Mode and Touch-Down
∆T_TH Time between Treshold Cross and Touch-Down
∆T_LG Time between Main Landing Gear and Nose LG Ground Touch
B.8.2 Reverse Type determination

Together with brakes and aerodynamic speed brakes, the reverse can be applied in order
to reduce speed after Touch-Down. The procedure described in this section determines
if the Reverse was applied and in case it is performed, which is the type of reverse.
The code presented below, has three possible outputs, which are:
• IDLE - If during Reverse the maximum power applied to the Engines is below
50% of N1
• FULL - If during Reverse the maximum power applied to the Engines is above
50% of N1 for at least 5 seconds
• NO - No Reverse applied
As presented in B.5, the transit between Idle and Full Reverse throttle positions
makes the engine power increase. In the Reverse situation a backward movement of
the throttle produces the increase of the power.
Other than this determination, there is counter (THR_COUNT), that determines
the number of seconds that reverse is applied.
AGS Code for Reverse Type Determination
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Reverse Type and duration determination
//
IF (FM_FWC = 8 OR FM_FWC = 9) THEN
IF ((REV_DEPLOYED1 = 1) AND (REV_DEPLOYED2 = 1)) THEN
MAX(N11C, N11_MAX)
MAX(N12C, N12_MAX)
IF ((N11_MAX < 50) AND (N12_MAX < 50)) THEN
91
TR = 'IDLE'
TRN = 1
THRUST_REV = 10
ENDIF
IF ((N11_MAX >= 50) AND (N12_MAX >= 50)) DURING 5 THEN
TR = 'FULL'
TRN = 2
THRUST_REV = 20
ELSE
TR = 'IDLE'
TRN = 1
THRUST_REV = 10
ENDIF
THR_COUNT = THR_COUNT + 1
ENDIF
ENDIF
IF (THR_COUNT = 0) THEN
TR = 'NO'
TRN = 0
ENDIF
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
92
Appendix C
Autoland AGS Procedure Code
Code available under request to hmendes@tap.pt
93
Appendix D
Support Scripts and Programs
Code available under request to hmendes@tap.pt
94
Appendix E
LIBSVM Software and Model

Construction
E.1 LIBSVM Software Presentation

LIBSVM is an integrated software used for support vector classications with dier-
ent SVM formulations [32]. This package was developed in National Taiwan Uni-
versity by Chih-Chung Chang and Chih-Jen Lin since the year 2000. It is writ-
ten in C++, and the source code, tools and dierent interfaces (Matlab/Octave,
Python, R, Java and others) are freely available from the ocial site of the project
(www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/ cjlin/libsvm/).
The input les to LIBSVM are ASCII les, fully documented and supported. The
testing with Autoland data will be implemented using the output le from the Autoland
Procedure (Appendix C).
The set of software available with LIBSVM and used in this project is summarised
in the listing below. The code runs both on Windows and Linux and tests on both
platforms have been done for this project.
• convert.c −→ C source code to convert CSV les into LIBSVM format

• svm-scale.exe −→ Windows executable tool for scaling the input data to the
SVM
• svm-train.exe −→ Windows executable tool for training a SVM
• svm-predict.exe −→ Windows executable tool to perform predictions on new
data
• checkdata.py −→ Python script that checks the correct LIBSVM format of the
input les
• grid.py −→ Python script used to determine the best C and γ for a RBF kernel
• easy.py −→ Python script that accumulates the functions of the scripts above
According to LIBSVM authors [36], the advised proper use of this tool is summarized
on the following items:
95
• Convert the Data to LIBSVM format
• Scaling the Data
• Use The RBF Kernel Function
• Cross Validation to determine the best C and γ
• Training to create the model
• Test the model to determine new predictions
These items are taken into consideration for the model construction and data testing
on the following sections.
E.2 LIBSVM Model Construction

The 354 Autoland Flights detected and classied in Section 2.5 are the starting point
for the application of the SVM theory. These ights will be used as the Training Set
(Figure E.1), i.e., all the autolands will be labelled according to a suitable criteria,
derived from the studies presented in previous Chapters. In this way, the model is
created with Autoland ights from December 2010 and January 2011. The remaining
of Autoland ights detected during the year 2011 will be used as the Testing Set.
Figure E.1: Training and Testing Set Flights
In the case under study, the input space X ∈ Rm is a space with dimension m = 42.
An extra information will be added corresponding to the label Y ≡ {±1}, which will
assign a classication to each vector. This step will require that a criteria is established
and this is of major importance, as future results from the SVM implementation derive
directly from the reliability of this labelling.
The rst problem to create a model with LIBSVM that has to be addressed, is the
matching between the output le from the AGS procedure (Appendix C) and the input
to LIBSVM. In order to solve it, a sequence of data manipulation programs have been
implemented. This process is described in Figure E.2.
In the case of Airbus A320 eet, the AGS procedure creates the CSV le named AU-
TOLAND_320RAW.CSV which is converted to AUTOLAND_320.CSV if a double-
comma is found, meaning that there was some data that was not exported during the
analysis process. This can happen if the landing runway is not found in the runway
or there are any errors during this process. The le at this stage corresponds to the
complete le with 270 features described in Section 2.3.4. Then it is converted to the
42 feature autoland2svm.csv using the program auto2libsvm.c (Section ??).
The format conversion from CSV to LIBSVM is performed with the convert.c pro-
gram (Section E.1), resulting the le autoland2svm. This le is ready to be used by
96
LIBSVM, but there is still the optional step during the model creation to split this
le in two for the matter of checking the accuracy of the model. Provided the labels
from le autoland2svm are known, part of this le creates the le autoland2svm.tr for
training the model, and the remaining are the contents of le autoland2svm.te used for
testing the model. This method will be used in Section E.4.
Figure E.2: AUTOLAND File Conversions to LIBSVM Use
E.3 Criteria used to create the Training File

The classication of Normal vs Abnornal cases was addressed in Section 2.8, as a result
of dierent studies to determine a classication criteria.
Several tests have been performed to establish a suitable criteria, keeping the results
obtained in the previous chapters, which are summarised in Table E.1. Considering
the results presented in this Table, some considerations have to be addressed. First, it
is a common criteria to all, that every ight tagged with PPF or PI, is to be labelled
as yi = −1 to keep the original classication from the Aircraft Manufacturer (Section
2.2). The remaining criteria, #1,#2 and #3, have the goal to extend this analysis.
Whenever a value from any of the 42 features is out of ±2σ from the average, the
corresponding ight is labelled as yi = −1 in the case of the Criteria #1. The result is
that the number of yi = −1 cases is greater than yi = +1, which reverses the logic of
normality that and makes it an unsuitable criteria for testing with an SVM.
97
Table E.1: Criteria to determine the SVM Training File
# Criteria yi = +1 Cases yi = −1 Cases

1 ±2σ for all featues 105 249
2 ±2σ for Flare, Touch Down and Ground 176 178
3 ±3σ for all featues 262 92
The second option tested (Criteria #2), was performed keeping the ±2σ but just to
Flare, Touch-Down keypoints and the Ground calculations. There is one improvement
on the number of cases with the Abnormal classication still in greater number than the
Normal which turns out to be one handicap, but the major drawback of this approach
is that it has the same problem as using the Poor Performance criteria, which is relying
just on keypoints close to the ground.
The solution from Criteria #3, seemed to be the most appropriate, as it produces
the analysis on all the 42 features being the values that are out of ±3σ from the average
are considered as Abnormal. The le produced with this criteria will be used in the
remaining sections of this chapter.
E.4 Model Construction with LIBSVM

Once the le is created with the correct format and the suitable criteria established, a
model can be produced. There is a set of labelled 354 vectors using the criteria from
the previous section. This le is split in two in order to predict the Accuracy of the
model created. As the labels are known, they can be compared with the predicted by
the model and provide the Accuracy computation (Equation E.1).
#_Correctly _P redicted_Data
Accuracy = · 100% (E.1)
#_T otal_T esting _Data
In this way a training le with 320 vectors and a testing le with the remaining
34 vectors, named respectively autoland2svm_3sigma.tr and autoland2svm_3sigma.te
will be created from the original le.
E.4.1 Scaling the Data

Before using these les to create the model, the scaling of the data has to be performed
in order that the features with a wider range will not dominate the sum that is calcu-
lated in the decision function (Equation 3.38). This is achieved in LIBSVM with the
svm-scale tool, that ranges all the features in the same bounds. This is applied both
for training and testing les with the following command lines [36]:
>> ./svm-scale -1 -l -u +1 -s range1 autoland2svm_3sigma.tr > autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.scale

>> ./svm-scale -r range1 autoland2svm_3sigma.te > autoland2svm_3sigma.te.scale
98
The rst command scales all the features into a ±1 range, stores this range to be
used in the second command and saves the result into autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.scale
to create the training scaled le. The second command reads the range and creates the
scaled testing le.
E.4.2 Cross Validation - Grid Search

In order to use the RBF kernel (Section 3.4), two parameters C and γ have to be
determined. Those are not known beforehand. The method applied by the tool grid.py
determines the pair of values (C, γ) by cross validation over a range of values for both
variables.
This is a trial-and-error method. Other than dividing the training data into two
parts, one considered unknown, the grid search expands this concept to split the train-
ing set into ν parts naming this method ν -fold cross-validation.
The process of cross-validation prevents the Overtting problem, which consists of
a model being created with an accuracy of 100% completely tight to the training data.
Once new data is tested with such a model, the accuracy gures are considerably low.
The script grid.py accepts as inputs the denitions of the ranges for C and γ , the
step size for scanning these ranges and the fold ν , i.e., the number of groups that the
data is to be divided in equal parts. The scanning for C and γ takes place at the powers
of two, 2begin , 2begin+step , ...., 2end . The representation of data splitting is presented in
Figure E.3, each ν -fold is used for testing the model and the remaining (ν − 1) are for
training. For each (C, γ) pair, a prediction of the testing data is performed producing a
Cross-Validation (CV) Accuracy. Applying this procedure to all the ν -folds one-by-one,
provides the values of C and γ that result in the best CV-Accuracy determined.
Figure E.3: Data split into ν -fold subsets
99
Being a trial-and-error method, it is convenient that a large amount of trials are
produced at this stage, to follow the guidelines of LIBSVM's auhors [36], so that a
reliable model is found to be used with novelty data.
The tests performed to improve CV-Accuracy are summarized in Table E.2. Test
#1 corresponds to the default values of grid.py which are the starting point to the
successive improvements. Despite other combinations have been tried, none revealed
better results than Test #9 here presented.
Table E.2: Summary of Tests Performed to improve CV-Accuracy
grid.py input grid.py output

Test # log2 (C)m log2 (C)M log2 (γ)m log2 (γ)M Step Fold C γ CV Accuracy
1 -5 15 -15 3 2 5 0.5 0.5 85.94%
2 -5 15 -15 3 2 10 2 0.5 87.81%
3 -1 2 -2 2 0.125 10 2.38 0.46 88.13%
4 1 2 -2.5 0.5 0.125 10 2.18 0.5 88.13%
5 1 2 -2.5 0.5 0.125 15 2 0.707 88.75%
6 -2 2 -3 3 0.25 15 1.41 0.84 88.75%
7 -1.2 1.2 -2 0 0.0625 25 1.34 0.59 89.06%
8 0.2 0.6 -1 -0.5 0.03125 30 1.20 0.59 89.06%
9 0.32 0.42 -1 -0.5 0.03125 25 1.30 0.59 89.06%
During the running of each test, a contour plot representing the lines of equal CV-
Accuracy is created. In Figures E.4 and E.5 are presented the contour plots for Test
#1 and #9 respectively.
The accuracy determined provides the reliability of the model. In this case, it is
expected that the degree of accuracy in the determination of labels, is not lower than
the CV-Accuracy from Table E.2 , for each pair (C, γ) determined.
Figure E.4: Contour Plot - Default Values Search
100
Figure E.5: Contour Plot - Best (C, γ) determined
E.4.3 Training - Model Construction

From the previous step the best determined values for the model parameters are, C =
1.30 and γ = 0.59, which correspond to an Accuracy = 89.06%. Using these values,
the model is created with the following command:
>> svm-train -c 1.303598864021176 -g 0.5946035575013605 autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.scale
optimization finished, #iter = 384

nu = 0.318132
obj = -77.654848, rho = 0.573805
nSV = 202, nBSV = 30
Total nSV = 202
** Model File ** : autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.scale.model
svm_type c_svc
kernel_type rbf
gamma 0.594604
nr_class 2
total_sv 202
rho 0.573805
label 1 -1
nr_sv 118 84
SV
0.3100271947396164 1:0.0921502 2:-0.712482 3:0.319435 4:0.112164 5:0.548387 ...(till feature 42:)
0.9949895865478108 1:-0.273038 2:-0.630435 3:0.39174 4:-0.109005 5:0.419355 6:-0.386364 ....
(....)
-1.277788247286919 1:-3.33067e-016 2:-0.520337 3:0.278269 4:-0.222749 5:0.548387 7:0.232323 ....
101
-0.7381174596955521 1:0.180887 2:-0.575035 3:0.267977 4:0.00157978 5:0.419355 6:-0.386364 .....
This command generates a new le named autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.scale.model con-

taining the αi values (Lagrange Multipliers) and the support vectors (Equation 3.38).
For the current Autoland data, there is a set of 202 support vectors, being 118 for
yi = −1 and 84 for yi = +1.
E.4.4 Prediction
The model le determined in the previous step can be now tested with the 34 vectors
that have been separated from the initial training set of 354. The command line is:
>>svm-predict autoland2svm_3sigma.te.scale autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.scale.model autoland2svm_3sigma.te.predict
The command generates one output le named autoland2svm_3sigma.te.predict,

which contain the predicted labels according to the model in use. In this case, the
value of the accuracy is determined from 33 vectors correctly determined out of 34,
using equation E.1.
E.4.5 easy.py - script to apply all steps

All the steps before, can be condensed into a single python script, easy.py. This is the
most straightforward way to use LIBSVM as it has inputs the training and testing sets,
and outputs the prediction for the testing set used. The command is the following:
>> python easy.py autoland2svm_3sigma.tr autoland2svm_3sigma.te
Scaling training data...

Cross validation...
Best c=1.303598864021176, g=0.5946035575013605 CV rate=89.0625
Training...
Output model: autoland2svm_3sigma.tr.model
Scaling testing data...
Testing...
Output prediction: autoland2svm.te.predict
This script acts together with grid.py, and the executables of svm-scale, svm.train
and svm-predict from LIBSVM . The grid search was changed according to the input
values from Table E.2 to produce a ner scan than the default values.
102
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TeseHM12Jun2012 - Algorith To Identify Abnormal Patterns in Aircraft Fligth Data

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Study of Mathematical Algorithms to Identify

Abnormal Patterns in Aircraft Flight Data

Dissertação para a Obtenção do Grau de Mestre em

3 Kernel Methods and Support Vector Machines 42

5 Conclusions and Future Work 61

A Flight Data Extracted from AGS (Airbus A320 eet) 65

C Autoland AGS Procedure Code 93

D Support Scripts and Programs 94

E LIBSVM Software and Model Construction 95

1.1 SFIM - Photographic Recorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2.1 Flight Data Stages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.1 SVM Principle - Binary Classication Hard Margins . . . . . . . . . . . 44

4.1 SVM Model Creation and use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

B.1 Velocity Triangle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

E.1 Training and Testing Set Flights . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

1.1 Parameters for dierent Fleets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

4.1 2011 Autoland Flights Detection Methods Comparison . . . . . . . . . 57

A.1 General Data (Aircraft) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

E.1 Criteria to determine the SVM Training File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

A320fam Airbus A320 aircraft family - A319/A320/A321

fθ (θ) Multivariate Normal Density function

At the beginning of the development of commercial aviation, a small number of param-

1.2 Aircraft Recording Systems

1 Dened as automatic control of the aircraft during approach and landing

• Vertical acceleration (load factor)

• Time (with the unfold rotation of the tape)

Fleet Words per Second Nbr Recorded Parameters

Figure 1.6: CSMU - Crash Survivable Memory Unit

1.2.2 Acquisition Units and Non-Crash Recorders

concerns the FDIU part of the FDIMU.

Figure 1.12: Magneto-Optical Disk Recorder Figure 1.13: Magneto-Optical Disk

Figure 1.15: Network Layout for WQAR Transmission

1.2.3 Flight Data Recording Process

Figure 1.17: Flight Data Signal Acquisition

• FDAU -Flight Data Acquisition Unit

• FDIMU - Flight Data Interface Monitoring Unit

• FDIU - Flight Data Interface Unit

• DMU - Data Management Unit

1.3 Flight Data Analysis Software - AGS (Analysis Ground

1.4 Previous Work and Thesis Scope

Figure 1.19: Guidelines for Work Development

1.5 Thesis Organization

• In Chapter 1, there is a description of the planned work to be done, it presents

2.1 The Autoland Monitoring

Figure 2.1: Flight Data Stages

2.2 Standard Procedure

2.2.1 Poor Integrity (PI)

Figure 2.2: Primary Flight Display - A320fam

Figure 2.3: Flight Mode Annunciator (Top of PFD)- A320fam

It is precisely in the fourth column (Approach Capabilities), that the capability is

• CAT III Dual

Figure 2.4: Poor Integrity Decision

2.2.2 Poor Performance (PPF)

Table 2.3: Autoland Gating Checks for A320 Fleet

Table 2.4: Autoland Gating Checks for A321 Fleet

The resulting Table is dened in 2.6.

2.3 Key Point Data Extraction

Figure 2.5: Keypoints - Autoland Modes + Threshold + Touch Down

Figure 2.6: Keypoints - Flight Path

in three main areas, which are:

Each of these components of the data is described next.

2.3.1 General Data

2.3.2 Air Sector Data

A Flight Data Extracted from AGS (Airbus A320 eet) 65

3.1 SVM Principle - Binary Classication Hard Margins . . . . . . . . . . . 44

1.1 Parameters for dierent Fleets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1 Dened as automatic control of the aircraft during approach and landing

The resulting Table is dened in 2.6.

Figure 2.7: Autoland and Autoapproach Logics with Standard Classication

• Outliers Identication (Through the histogram analysis)

with entries dened as:

3.2 Binary Classier - Hard Margins

3.3 Binary Classier - Soft Margins

Figure 3.3: SVM Principle - Binary Classication Soft Margins

3.4 Binary Classication - Kernel Trick