Adding New Functions to the Remote Aireld Lighting System

Jianhua Liu, Christopher Grant

College of Engineering Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Daytona Beach, FL 32114 Email: liu620@erau.edu, grantch@erau.edu

Donald Gallagher
Visual Guidance Programm Airport Safety Technology R&D Sub-Group, AJP-6311 Federal Aviation Administration Email: Donald.Gallagher@faa.gov

AbstractThere are many remote airelds that are not connected to the power grid. Providing adequate lighting to these airelds is necessary and challenging. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has sponsored a research project, Remote Aireld Lighting Systems (RALS), through the Center for General Aviation Research (CGAR). The ndings from the RALS research specied a light that had low power needs and a color/intensity to meet the requirements for aireld identication and landing. To make these lights more appropriate to wide spread applications, the research team is conducting an exemplary operational test. In this paper, we discuss the new functions added to these lights for the operational test, including both automatically/remotely switching on/off the lights and smart charging of the batteries using solar panels under the control of a microcontroller. In addition, we consider future new functions such as low cost pilot controlled lighting as well as wireless networking for health monitoring and controlling of the lighting system. These new functions can greatly improve the convenience of the usage of RALS while keeping the same low cost.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), University of North Dakota, and University of Alaska Anchorage. The RALS team characterized a remote aireld (RA1 ), with a typical remote runwar approximately being 75 ft. wide and 3000 ft. long, in the following aspects: RA1 no power is available from the power grid; RA2 powering schemes are limited due to possible theft or vandalism; RA3 power usage should be limited due to the cost and inconvenience of on-site power generation; RA4 existing FAA-certied lighting systems cannot be deployed due to high consumption of power; and RA5 the frequency of RALS usage is about 2 hours a time, 2 times a day, and 3 days a week, which yields a total of 2 2 3 = 12 hours a week. The RALS research identied a lighting conguration consisting of four corner lights (so that they can help pilots identifying the location and orientation of the runway at a distance 5 miles from the aireld) and a number of retroreective panels to act as edge lights (so that the panels can assist pilots landing safely on the runway). After various lab and eld testing, including test ights with the specied system, the RALS team came out the following requirements for the corner lights (CL): CL1 Aviation Green (wavelength 500 nm) is used for best visual perception effect at night time; CL2 the emission is omnidirectional with 10 photopic candelas minimum between 0 to 10 degrees in the vertical plane so that the lights can be perceived by pilots from 5 miles away; CL3 synchronized 2 Hz, 40% duty cycle ashing of the 4 corner lights is necessary to facilitate pilots identication of the aireld in the presence of light
1 To facilitate referencing the numbered items in the paper, we use leadings two-letter abbreviations, with the denitions underlined.

Index TermsRunway lighting, Solar charging, Remote control, Pilot-controlled lighting, Portable LED light, Embedded system, ZigBee applications. I. I NTRODUCTION There are numerous small, remote communities in the United States (even more around the entire world) which do not have convenient, paved road access. For occasional emergency and provisional supply functions, remote airelds are a vital lifeline for these communities. To aid the pilots identifying the runway of the airelds as well as landing safely at night time, adequate lighting is necessary; however, a traditional aireld lighting system could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and still be unusable because of an inadequate power supply for the lighting system. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sponsored a research project to investigate remote aireld lighting systems (RALS) [1] through The Center for General Aviation Research (CGAR). The RALS team includes FAA, CGAR,

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pollutions; the synchronization can be achieved by using a GPS receiver at each light. The RALS team contracted FarLight LLC to produce customized general purpose runway corner lights. The specication did not require LED as the light source but due to the required time usage of the light and having battery power, LEDs were used in the test xtures. Before wide spread applications of RALS, exemplary operational test is necessary. Currently, FAA, CGAR, and ERAU are collaborating to conduct such an operational test in Florida, as a second phase of the RALS project. To facilitate this operational test, we add new functions to the FarLight LED runway corner lights. In this paper, we discuss the new functions added to the FarLight LED runway corner lights, including both automatically/remotely switching on/off the lights and smart charging of the batteries using solar panels under the control of a microcontroller. In addition, we consider future new functions such as low cost pilot controlled lighting as well as wireless networking for health monitoring and control of the lighting system. These new functions can greatly improve the convenience of the lighting system while keeping the cost low. II. N EW FUNCTIONS FOR THE CURRENT EXEMPLARY
OPERATIONAL TEST

Fig. 1.

Block diagram of the FarLight LED runway corner light.

Before discussing the new functions added for the current exemplary operational test, let us give a quick overview of the FarLight LED runway corner light to which the new functions are added. A. The FarLight LED runway corner light The block diagram of the FarLight LED runway corner light is shown in Fig. 1. Note that the battery pack has two terminalsa Regulated 6 V terminal that powers the LED Light Controller and an Unregulated 7.4 V terminal that can be used to charge the battery or monitor the voltage level of the battery. The FarLight LED runway corner lights (FL) satisfy the above requirements CL1 to CL3 with additional parameters listed below: FL1 Color: Green, = 505 nm; FL2 Intensity: 12.5 photopic candelas minimum between 0 to 10 degrees in vertical plane; FL3 Power source: rechargeable 7.4 V Li-Ion battery with 6 V regulated output and 7200 mAh capacity; FL4 Continuous operating time: 36 hours minimum. B. The modied LED runway corner lights for the test The LED runway corner light is an LED xture with minimum functionalitiesit has to be switched on/off manually and its battery has to be charged manually with an AC Li-Ion battery charger. These manual operations can cause

much inconvenience for the exemplary operational test as well as to those residents living nearby the aireld who are often bothered by the light pollution when the system is not used for landing2 . To make the exemplary operational test easier, two new functions (NF) have been added, with corresponding hardware and software: NF1 switching on/off the lights automatically/remotely; and NF2 charging the Li-Ion batteries smartly by using solar panels. The block diagram of the modied LED corner light for the operational test is shown in Fig. 2, where a Solar Panel and an Operation Controller, with related wiring, are added to the light to perform the added new functions. Note that the switch of the original light is set to always on so that the switching on/off of the LED Light Controller can be controlled by an electronic switch in the Operation Controller. A picture of the modied LED runway corner light, with annotation to each functioning block, is shown in Fig. 3. 1) The Operation Controller: The Operation Controller, located in a sealed box under the solar panel in Fig. 3 and illustrated in Fig. 4, is the brain as well as the workhorse of the modied light. It consists of the Mother Board, the Microcontroller board (an Arduino Nano [2] is used for the operational test, and it can be replaced by a customized microcontroller board designed by the authors, also shown in Fig. 4, in the future; this customized board has integrated ZigBee [3], [4] wireless networking functions) and an 4 channel Remote Control Receiver. The Microcontroller (MC) board of the Operation Controller can perform the following functions: MC1 polling the output of the Remote Control Receiver to perform the transition of the work mode (will
2 These intense ashing LED lights can be annoying to some residents, and they have requested that the LED corner lights should be able to be turned off easily if needed.

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Fig. 2.

Block diagram of the modied LED runway corner light.

Fig. 4. light.

Picture of the Operation Controller of the modied LED corner

Fig. 3.

Picture of the modied LED runway corner light.

be detailed later) according to the polling result; MC2 monitoring the voltage level of the Solar Panel to determine if it is currently day time or night time by comparing the sampled voltage value to predetermined thresholds; the result will be used to switch on/off the LED Light Controller according to the work mode it has high enough voltage so that the Battery Pack can be charged MC3 monitoring the voltage level of the Battery Pack to determine if it should be charged according to the rules to be described later and switching on/off the battery charger accordingly; MC4 switching on/off the LED Light Controllerand hence the light; MC5 monitoring the health of the Battery Pack, such as the discharging rate in normal usage, to determine

if it has a satisfying capacity or not. (The result can be sent to a PC through a USB cable if Arduino Nano is used or through a ZigBee device if the customized Microcontroller board is used.) 2) Remote control of the modied lights: The modied LED runway corner lights can be switched on/off remotely; this is supported by a low cost wireless remote control link working in the 315 MHz frequency band that is heavily used by wireless garage openers. This link consists of a remote control transmitter and 4 matching remote control receivers, each for a corner light, and has the following highlights: RC1 Operating distance: up to 3000 meters; RC2 Modulation: ASK (amplitude-shift keying); RC3 Powering for the receiver: 5 V DC, 5 mA; RC4 Coding: Fixed code via soldering [5]; RC5 Number of channels at each receiver: 4; RC6 Mode of receiver output: momentary3 . Note that coding is necessary to avoid interference from nearby garage openers. Fixed code, where the code does not change, is preferred to rolling code where the code changes each time the transmitter button is pressed, due to the following reasons: for xed code, multiple transmitters can be used to control multiple receivers if they are coded with the same code, which is necessary for our operational test, whereas for the rolling code, only one transmitter can be used with multiple receiversit is necessary to train the receivers so that they learn the code from one (and only one) transmitter; (for our operational test, at least one transmitter will be kept by the testing crew, and at least another one will be kept by the residents living
3 An alternative mode is latched. The momentary mode is preferred since a button may have to be pressed a few times to activate all the lights if the transmitter is not located appropriately; in this case, receivers with latched mode can have different outputs which can desynchronize the lights.

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nearby the lights if they choose to switch off the lights when not in use); when controlling multiple receivers with a single transmitter using the rolling code, if one receiver loses the signal due to reasons such as long distance from the transmitter or blocked transmission path, the codes in the receivers will lose synchronization, and the system will have to be retrained.

3) Working modes: There are 4 push buttons on the remote control transmitter, denoted as A to D, each corresponding to a channel at the receiver. There are 3 working modes for the modied LED runway corner light, each is tied to a push button on the transmitter: Mode 1 (default mode, tied to button A) the light will be turned on at night time; Mode 2 (button B) the light will be turned off at night time; Mode 3 (button C) the light will be turned on for 15 minutes at any time (day or night). The transition between the working modes is shown in Fig. 5. When the modied LED runway corner light is turned on, it enters Mode 1 at the reset of the microcontroller. Pressing Button B on the transmitter will lead it to Mode 2; this is necessary so that the residents around the airled can turn off the lights at night time if no aircraft is landing and not be bothered by the ashing runway lights. When it gets dark again the next day, the light returns to Mode 1 automatically; the light can also be set to Mode 1 from Mode 2 by pressing Button A. At anytime, a press of Button C on the transmitter will bring the light to Mode 3, where the light will be on for 15 minutes. After that, or if Button D is pressed, it will go back to the mode before it enters Mode 3. Note that if one or more lights do not response to a press of a button due to long distance or antenna blocking, a repeated pressing of the button at a different location will solve the problem. 4) Battery charging: Solar energy, if available, is a green and convenient source for charging the batteries of the LED corner lights. The following issues are considered when choosing the solar panels and designing the battery charging circuitry. a) Type of charger: The Li-Ion batteries cannot be trickle-charged (the tiny, constant charging current will shorten the life of the Li-Ion batteries), and hence a smart charger is needed. This smart charger will start charging if the output voltage of the solar panel is higher than a preset threshold and the voltage of the battery pack is lower than another preset threshold. It will stop charging when the charging current is lower than a preset threshold. b) Choice of solar panel: The nominal voltage at the unregulated terminal of the Li-Ion battery pack is 7.4 V,
Fig. 5. Diagram of the state transition of the working modes for the modied LED corner light for the operational test.

and the maximum (allowable) voltage is 8.4 V when it is fully charged. As such, the solar panel should be able to provide no less than 10 V output under the sunshine if the switching type boost DC-DC converter, which is usually more expensive than other types, is not used. However, if the output voltage of the solar panel is too high, it will be wasted. For example, if a linear type voltage regulator is used, the excessive voltage is converted to heat, which is a waste of the output of the solar panel. Or if a switching type buck DC-DC converter is used, the converter will not draw current from the solar panel during the off period of the duty cycle of the converter, which is a waste of the solar panel. While using a capacitor with large capacitance at the input of the switching type buck DC-DC converter circuit can mitigate the waste, it is not very efcient. The off-the-shelf 6 V solar panels can provide more than 10 V output under the sunshine, while the off-the-shelf 12 V solar panels can provide about 20 V output under the same condition. While the latter is perfect for charging the 12 V SLA (sealed lead acid) batteries, its voltage is too high for our application. Hence, we choose the 6 V solar panels. To leave enough margin for the charging in the case of a few consecutive overcast/rainy days, we choose the solar panels with output power no less than 6 Watts. III. N EW FUNCTIONS FOR FUTURE SYSTEMS In this section, a few new functions for the future RALS are considered. A. Pilot controlled lighting In non-towered or little-used airelds where the power grid is available but it is not economical to light the runways all night or to provide staff to switch the lights on/off, the lighting systems of the airelds can be controlled by using a pilot controlled lighting (PCL, PL) system [6]. With the

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PCL system, a pilot can turn on the lighting system for 15 minutes from the air by clicking the microphone talk button on a specied aviation radio frequency. According to FAA, the PCL systems usually have three settings: PL1 Low intensity: 3 clicks within 5 seconds; PL2 Medium intensity: 5 clicks within 5 seconds; PL3 High intensity: 7 clicks within 5 seconds. Note that the controller of a PCL system may be reset at any time during the turn-on which will keep the PCL system on for another 15 minutes. Unfortunately, the existing controllers of the PCL systems cannot be appropriately used in RALS because the existing controllers work in the centralized mode, i.e., a controller controls the entire lighting system, whereas the RALS lights work in the distributed mode; this mode difference problem can be remedied by providing a controller to each LED run corner light, but this remedy will lead to the next problem. An existing PCL controller, which consists of a microcontroller, an aviation band receiver, and a relay for switching on/off the 110/240 VAC or 24 VDC power supply for the lighting system, is very costly compared to the LED runway corner lights of the RALS. The researchers propose to use a low cost method to implement the PCL controller for RALS. This RALS PCL controller is the same as the existing PCL controllers (PC) except the relay is replaced by a remote control transmitter, which can be the same one used for the operational test. With a minor revision of the modied LED runway corner light, the following settings can be implemented: PC1 Flashing corner lights for 15 minutes: 5 clicks within 5 seconds; PC2 Solid corner lights for 15 minutes: 7 clicks within 5 seconds. Note that with these settings, the GPS receiver for each corner light is no longer necessary since the synchronization of the ashing can be triggered by the transmission of the signals from the remote control transmitter and maintained by the microcontroller in the Operation Controller of the light. With appropriate choice of the aviation band receiver, the saving of the GPS receivers will be more than enough to justify the cost of the PCL controller for RALS. This way, we can greatly improve the convenience of using RALS while maintaining the same cost (or even lowering the cost). Note that Mode 3 of the modied LED corner light is similar to the future new function PC1. B. Wireless networking With the lowering of the cost of electronic devices and solar panels, the retroreective panels can be replaced by

simple LED edge lights4 . When the usage of these LED edge lights can be justied, a microcontroller board like the customized one with ZigBee wireless networking functions shown in Fig. 4 can be used in the edge lights to provide control as well as routing for wireless networking. Wireless networking can bring RALS to a new level of convenience. The new functions provided by wireless networking (WN) can be summarized as follows: WN1 By using a ZigBee devices connected to a personal computer, a maintenance staff can receive the system health data, such as the health of the batteries, just by driving by the lighting system; WN2 The remote control transmitter and receivers for the PCL function can be replaced by the wireless networking transceivers, which can provide endless system reconguration/upgrading capabilities. IV. C ONCLUDING R EMARKS In this paper, we have discussed the new functions added to a manufactures LED runway corner lights for an exemplary operational test of RALS. These new functions include automatically/remotely switching on/off the lights and smart charging of the batteries using solar panels under the control of microcontrollers. In addition, we have also considered future new functions such as low cost pilot controlled lighting as well as wireless networking for health monitoring and controlling of the lighting system. These new functions can greatly improve the convenience of the usage of RALS while keeping the same cost and thus greatly facilitate wide spread application of RALS. R EFERENCES
[1] Project Description, Remote airport lighting systems (rals), CGAR Online, http://www.cgar.org/information research.asp?E=1&PROJID=23, last accessed: 11/23/2009. [2] Arduino nano v 3.0 user manual, Download available at http://gravitech.us/Arduino/NANO30/Arduino-Nano3-0.pdf, last accessed: 11/23/2009. [3] S. Farahani, ZigBee Wireless Networks and Transceivers. Burlington, MA: Newnes, Elsevier Ltd., 2008. [4] IEEE Standard 802.15.4, Part 15.4: Wireless medium access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specications for low-rate wireless personal area networks (WPANs), Download available at http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/download/802.15.4-2006.pdf, last retrieved 11/23/2009. [5] A. I. Alrabady and S. M. Mahmud, Analysis of attacks against the security of keyless-entry systems for vehicles and suggestions for improved designs, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 54, pp. 4150, January 2005. [6] FAA aeronautical information manual, Federal Aviation Administration, Download available: http://www.faa.gov/airtrafc/publications/atpubs/aim/Chap2/aim0201.html. Last accessed: 11/23/2009.
4 Some of the solar-powered LED garden lights are already cheaper than the retroreective panels.

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