Radarcape:Software Features Major2

Radarcape Software Features (Major Release 2)

Since March 2017, we provide Major Release 2. Currently this page describes the differences to Radarcape:Software_Features of Major 1, which all are included in Major 2 with only minor changes, but a lot of add-ons and enhancements. Please read across Software_Features for a first overview.

Key Features

This is a brief summary of all new features.

• Radarcape MLAT:
  • high precision location of Mode-S and ADS-B aircraft
  • update rate 1/sec
• latency app. 1.5 seconds
• New features within Radarcape web interface:
  • New responsive web design optimized for web browsers on desktop and mobile devices, filter configuration extended to hex id and track length
• New features within Radarcape software:
  • Radarcape is now able to support native piAware from FlightAware in the background as fully featured feeder and can read back MLAT results in order to display them in aircraft list, 2D and KML maps
  • Aircaft location and flight data are stored and accessible separately for ADS-B, Radarcape MLAT and FlightAware MLAT
  • Full performance feeder for Opensky Network
  • Automatic update of flight route and base station database
  • BDS register data (Extdata) free of extra charges
  • Signal level available converted to dBm
• Sharing groups (to come):
  • Several Radarcapes can be combined into a sharing network
• Support for Planeplotter Mobile:
  • PPm can be used to display single Radarcape or sharing groups data through local connection or connection using our MLAT server
• 2 Channel Radarcape
  • Antenna Diversity
  • Dual Antenna systems

Radarcape Multilateration Server

Mulitlateration posisiton estimation is possible with at least 3 Radarcape that share a common air space

• High precision MLAT results returning location, speed, heading and vertical rate
• MLAT results are propagated within the private sharing group
• Very low latency: Results are returned once per second with an latency of app. 1.5sec.
• No need for ADS-B aircraft as calibration references
• High accuracy for even a single position estimation, enhanced with a highly sophisticated, adapting Kalman filter.
• MLAT results are also available for ADS-B aircraft, for example to verify their actual position or in case of spoofing
• Server/client connection is authorized and encrypted by TLS key pairs

MLAT server provides data streams in the same way as every Radarcape

Not provided for raw formats, e.g. 10002-10006)

• Any software which reads Radarcape data can read a combination of several on the server

Radarcape Software Features

New responsive web design

• Optimized for web browsers, mobile devices and tablets

Sharing Groups (planned)

• A number of Radarcapes can be combined through our server forming a sharing group, e.g. for wide area supervision or local hot spot precision observation.
• Radarcape MLAT results are shared within such a Sharing Group

Fleet Watch

• Filter for specific aircraft supports either ICAO hex codes (e.g. 3c8afb) or aircraft registrations (e.g. D-AQUI)

FlightAware no compromise feed including multilateration results

• FlightAware sharing supported with no compromises
• MLAT results from FlightAware feeder can be read back into the Radarcape in addition to MLAT results from Radarcape network

Location and flight paths of different sources are stored and output separately

• ADS-B, Radarcape-MLAT, FlightAware-MLAT and Sharing Group results may be observed separately
• These data are also available within the JSON data outputs
• A new field was added to aircraftlist.json which contains the location, altitude, heading, speed and vertical rate for each of the location sources

New feeder for Opensky Network

• Opensky network feeder with no compromises

GPS data is provided to Chrony or NTPD

• The Radarcape becomes a stratum 1 time server

Optimized TCP streams

• In order to decrease network load, network streams became buffered

Signal level in dBm

• The signal level at the antenna connector is indicated in dBm
  (note that this is not foreseen for measurement purposes)

Second-of-Day mode selectable

The value range of the second-of-day field in the GPS timestamp is selectable, the current setting is reported in status frame

• legacy mode: value range is 1…86400
• true UTC mode: value range is 0 … 86399