Air-Traffic-Based Synchronization of Ground Infrastructure

This is a new method for synchronizing beacons for terrestrial pseudoranging, with the aim of supporting a new generation of Alternative PNT for civil aviation. The paper discusses a variety of clock models and how the well-established Two-Way Time Transfer protocol can be applied to aviation, using aircraft as relays between ground beacons. With this setup we analyze real air traffic data to show how the proposed method could reduce the costs of providing APNT, while guaranteeing a network synchronized to within 50 ns.