When a Taiwanese electric company wanted to rollout a windfarm, the national Civil Aviation Authority turned to ATDI for help. They needed to understand the impact of the proposed windfarm on their ATC radars which sat directly under the flightpath of air traffic. The CAA needed to simulate effect of interference to understand the impact on their ability communicate with planes.
Groups of wind turbines often appear as clutter to ATC radar system, creating cluttered zones and making it difficult to track planes as they fly over. This safety concern is often costly and time-consuming for airports, who need mitigate the effects and challenge planning permission requests for these developments.
Pierre Coutey, Senior Engineer at ATDI said, “HTZ incorporates recognised ITU propagation models to simulate the impact of turbines on aeronautical radars and other communications equipment. These proven models allow us to analyse the effects of potential interference.”
Using HTZ, the aviation authority can evaluate the impact on radars and surrounding telecommunications equipment and offer mitigation solutions to reduce the impact. HTZ supports windfarm mitigation analysis, which identifies whether a development is detected and if it adversely affects the ATC radar. Using C/I interference maps, users can identify obstructions caused by the wind turbines, and provide a clearance analysis for the potential interactions between the turbines and other equipment like weather radars. This analysis identifies three interference criteria in the near-field zone, diffraction and signal reflection.
For more information on this functionality in HTZ, contact your local office.
