Apparatus and method for determining whether a vehicle is located in a spot beam
AssigneeRockwell Collins, Inc.
InventorCraig P. Mueggenberg
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and apparatus for determining the inclusion or exclusion of a current position of an aircraft within a satellite communication spot beam, which uses a technique of slightly moving the position being checked for inclusion, when it is determined that a ray drawn from the current position is coextensive with an endpoint of any line segment making up a boundary of the spot beam.
Claims19
A method for determining the inclusion of a predetermined position within a polygon, comprising the steps of:
- generating a reference line from the predetermined position to some position known to be outside of the polygon;
- making an intersection determination if one of a plurality of line segments, forming a boundary of the polygon, has an endpoint which is along the reference line;
- moving the predetermined position to a displaced location, in response to said intersection determination;
- and,
- repeating a predetermined process for determination of inclusion of the displaced location in the polygon.
A method of determining inclusion of a position of an aircraft within a satellite communication spot beam, comprising the steps of:
- defining the spot beam as a plurality of adjacent line segments forming a polygon, where each line segment has two vertices;
- determining, for each line segment, whether such segment has both of said vertices on a single side of a reference ray drawn from the position to a known position outside of the spot beam;
- for those segments not having both vertices on a single side of said reference ray, determining if any of said vertices are on said reference ray;
- if any segment has a vertex on the reference ray, then the position is moved to a displaced location, and then returning to said step of determining,
- if no segment has a vertex on the reference ray then, a point of intersection is calculated for each segment through which the ray is drawn;
- generating a total number representative of a number of said points of intersection;
- and,
- determining whether said total number is even.
An apparatus for satellite communication by an aircraft in a spot beam, the apparatus comprising;
- means for determining a current position of an aircraft during flight;
- means for executing computer code;
- executable computer code means which performs a function of determining an inclusion characteristic of said current position with respect to a spot beam, where said computer code means is responsive to a determination of whether a ray drawn from the current position to a known point outside of the spot beam is coextensive with a vertex of a line segment defining a polygon boundary which is representative of a boundary characteristic of the spot beam, and the limitation—and where said executable code means is responsive to a displacement of said current position to a displaced location.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.