J. David Powell

Professor
Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and Mechanical Engineering

Degrees

B.S. M.I.T. - Mechanical Engineering (1960)

M.S. Stanford University - Aeronautics & Astronautics (1966)

Ph.D. Stanford University - Aeronautics & Astronautics (1970)

Research Interests

Navigation and Control, applied to aircraft, spacecraft and automobiles. He is the author of over 100 papers and two texts on Control Systems. Professor Powell's research is concerned with GPS based aircraft and ground vehicle navigation. His research aims at the development of precision navigation for aircraft automatic landings in poor visibility conditions, the use of GPS for aircraft surveillance, collision avoidance and automatic navigation, the use of GPS-based attitude with inertial instruments for an aircraft attitude reference, and the use of pseudolites to augment GPS for ground vehicle navigation near obstructions, and automobile navigation using GPS.

Recent Publications

• Digital Control of Dynamic Systems, 3rd Edition, (with G.F. Franklin & M. Workman), Addison-Wesley, 1998.
• Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems, 3rd Edition, (with G.F. Franklin & A. Emami-Naeini), Addison-Wesley, 1994.
• Communication Protocols for GPS-based Surveillance and TCAS, (with Ran Gazit), presented at ION GPS-94, September 21-23, 1994, Salt Lake City, Utah.
• The Role of Dead Reckoning and Inertial Sensors in Future General Aviation Navigation, (with Zeev Berman), presented at IEEE PLANS '98, Rancho Mirage, CA., April 22, 1998.
• A Low Cost GPS/Inertial Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS) for General Aviation Applications, (with Demoz Gebre and Roger Hayward), presented at IEEE PLANS '98, Rancho Mirage, CA., April 22, 1998.
• Precise Positioning with GPS near Obstructions by Augmentation with Pseudolites, (with Jonathan Stone), presented at IEEE PLANS '98, Rancho Mirage, CA., April 22, 1998.
• "Single Baseline GPS Attitude Heading Reference System (AHRS) for Aircraft Applications", (with R. Hayward and A. Marchick), presented at the 1999 ACC >in San Diego, CA June 4, 1999

Projects

• FAA "Wide Area Augmentation System" (WAAS)
• Aircraft Attitude Heading Reference Systems (AHRS) aided by GPS
• Highway-in-the-Sky aircraft guidance
• Pseudolite aiding of open pit mining positioning.
• Automotive navigation

Last updated 8/25/98 /HTML>