Method and device for determining the position of an aircraft in an approach for a landing

A method for determining the position of an aircraft in an approach for a landing, the method comprising a series of steps comprising:

• a radar image acquisition step, implemented by at least one radar mounted on the aircraft, the acquisition step comprising taking at least one radar image of the terrain in front of the aircraft in a zone containing at least one characteristic pattern, the position of said characteristic pattern being known;
• an image processing step, implemented by an image processing unit and comprising at least detecting, on the radar image, a characteristic symbol representing said characteristic pattern;
• a computation step, implemented by a computation unit and comprising determining, from at least the position of the characteristic symbol in the radar image and from characteristics of the radar image acquisition, relative position information illustrating the position of the aircraft in relation to the characteristic pattern, and determining the position of the aircraft from said relative position information and from the known position of the characteristic pattern;
• an updating step, implemented by an updating unit, after the computation step, and comprising determining an updated position of the aircraft by updating an operational position of the aircraft, using said position of the aircraft determined in the computation step;
• and
• a data transmission step, implemented by a data transmission unit and comprising transmitting at least said updated position of the aircraft to at least one user system.