This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2017 conference.
Development of a Power over Ethernet (PoE)
Enabled ADS-B Receiver System
Nagendra Kumar Mangali1 and Vijendra S. Bagmare2
Central Research Laboratory, Bharat Electronics Limited, Bangalore, India
Email: 1 mangalinagendrakumar@bel.co.in 2 vijendrasb@bel.co.in
Abstract—An Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast
(ADS-B) is used to track ADS-B equipped aircrafts moving
around the coverage area of the ADS-B receiver. We had devel-
oped a Power over Ethernet (PoE) enabled ADS-B receiver system
using Embedded platform with RTL-SDR and it is capable of
tracking ADS-B equipped aircrafts moving around at a maximum
range of 470 km from the location of the receiver. We used
a 100 m lengthy Ethernet cable to separate the RF front end
and ADS-B data processing system from the central ADS-B data
analysis unit. We used LNA to amplify the received Mode-Signal
and increase the coverage area of the ADS-B receiver.
Index Terms—Mode-S, ADS-B, Short Squitter, Extended Squit-
ter, PoE, RTL-SDR.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) is a
surveillance technology to track ADS-B equipped co-operative
aircrafts. The air traffic is managed by an ADS-B surveillance
technology in a new way [1]. Also, this surveillance technol-
ogy eliminates dependency of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) on
controllers, where requires watching radar scopes in a central
location. The properly equipped ADS-B aircraft automatically
report their position and other aviation parameters, without
need for a radar interrogation. The ADS-B system at aircraft
contains ADS-B transponder and GPS receiver. The aircraft’s
ADS-B transponder depends on GPS receiver on board and
ADS-B OUT transmitter. The ADS-B surveillance technology
allows ATC to monitor the aircrafts moving around. These
ADS-B equipped aircrafts broadcasts their position informa-
tion and other avionic information to ADS-B IN equipped
airplanes and the ATC. In other words, all the ADS-B receivers
will receive the ADS-B data from ADS-B equipped aircrafts,
which are in the vicinity of an ADS-B receiver. The ADS-B
OUT rules [2] say that by 2020, all the aircrafts flying in Class
A, B and C airspace, plus Class E airspace above 10,000 feet
but not below 2,500 feet will be required to have ADS-B OUT
equipment in their aircrafts.
The primary radar system is used to detect and localize
potentially non-cooperative targets and the secondary radar
system is used to receive the additional information from
the co-operative target’s transponder [3]. The ADS-B receiver
system also receive the data from co-operative targets and the
accuracy of the ADS-B data is much more in comparison with
the conventional radar systems.
The pilots in the ADS-B equipped aircrafts receives air-to-
air and ground-to-air traffic information. The target’s unique
ID and ICAO identifier, the target’s relative altitude and
978-1-5090-4442-9/17/$31.00 2017
c IEEE
target’s heading information are available at the cockpit to
the pilot [4].
The Ground-based Transceivers (GBT) typically radars have
limitations in the coverage area in both azimuth and elevation
and also, there are many gray regions not in the surveillance of
any radar. Especially in those regions the ADS-B surveillance
technology useful for the pilots to observe the aircrafts moving
around. The major disadvantage of the ADS-B surveillance
technology is that it cannot display the non-ADS-B-equipped
aircrafts since the system doesn’t receive any ADS-B infor-
mation for processing. In order to display the non-ADS-B-
equipped airplanes on a cockpit display of traffic Information
(CDTI), the host airplane has to be within line-of-sight of a
GBT to sends up the traffic forwarded from ground-based air
traffic surveillance sensors [4].
An experiment on Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR based out-
door ADS-B receiver was conducted with 1/4 waveguide plane
antenna and 1090 MHz band pass filter [5]. The Raspberry Pi
was powered up using Universal Battery Elimination Circuit
(UBEC), which basically converts upto 23 V input to 5 V
output. The input power to the UBEC is provided through
unused wires in the Ethernet cable itself to carry the power.
The Embedded platform transmits aircraft data back to a PC
via an Ethernet cable.
This paper explains the architecture of ADS-B receiver
system in Section II, the operating principle of ADS-B receiver
is explained in Section III, the communication building blocks
of digital Mode-S signal processing is explained in Section IV,
the two varieties of Mode-S signals namely short squitter and
extended squitter are explained in Section V, the fields of
ADS-B frame are described in Section VI and the Sections VII
and VIII mention the conclusion and future work respectively.
II. ADS-B R ECEIVER A RCHITECTURE
The block diagram of ADS-B receiver system is shown in
the Fig. 1. The front end of ADS-B receiver system consists
of an antenna with 5.5 dBi of gain, a band pass filter with
pass range of 980–1150 MHz with insertion loss of approx.
1.5 and 40 dB attenuation of unwanted frequencies and a Low
Noise Amplifier (LNA) with 18.8 dB gain at 1090 MHz. The
RTL-SDR ADS-B USB dongle contains a Rafael Micro tuner
IC capable of tuning to 1090 MHz and a Realtek IC capable
of A/D conversion, digital processing and having USB slave
interface. The heart of ADS-B receiver system is ADS-B data
processing unit, which consists of Raspberry Pi3 embedded
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 This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2017 conference.
Antenna
ADS-B Receiver Front end
RF Signal Filtered RF
Signal
Low Noise Amplifier
1090 MHz Filter (LNA) of 18.8 dB
gain
+5V Power
ADS-B Aircraft Data
Analysis Unit
Fig. 1. The block diagram of ADS-B receiver system.
platform with Pi PoE switch HAT. The ADS-B receiver system
also contains the PoE injector and ADS-B aircraft data analysis
unit. The Pi PoE Switch HAT is an add on board for the
Raspberry Pi that brings the Pi Supply Switch technology
together with PoE all in one fantastic package. You can now
power your Raspberry Pi and provide an Ethernet connection
in any location with just a single cable. Perfect for removing
the clutter of wires and for reliable use in remote locations.
III. P RINCIPLE OF O PERATION
The ADS-B receiver front end receives Mode-S signal along
with other spurious signals through antenna and filters the
unwanted signals through 1090 MHz band pass filter. The
1090 MHz filtered Mode-S signal is amplified with LNA and
the amplified signal is fed to the RTL-SDR ADS-B USB
Dongle for digital conversion and digital processing. The
digitized I/Q samples are fed to the ADS-B data processing
Unit over USB. The RTL-SDR ADS-B Dongle is powered
through USB interface. Also, the LNA is powered with +5 V
from the Raspberry Pi3 Embedded platform. The embedded
platform is powered from Pi PoE switch HAT.
All the communication system receiver blocks are running
in the Embedded Platform, which includes starting from
preamble detection to CRC validation. The input to the pream-
ble detection block is I/Q samples and the output of the CRC
validation block is valid ADS-B data. The valid ADS-B data is
packetized and send to the remote ADS-B aircraft data analysis
unit over Ethernet interface.
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Amplified
RF Signal
RTL-SDR ADS-B
USB Dongle
ADS-B data processing Unit
Digital I/Q LAN
USB
Data
Raspberry Pi 3
Embedded Platform Pi PoE Switch HAT
Power
LAN Data
PoE Injector
LAN Data + Power
Power
The Raspberry Pi3 and Pi PoE Switch HAT exchanges data
over Ethernet Interface. The Pi PoE switch HAT receives
power over LAN wire and down converts to the required
voltages. The PoE injector is used to inject power and data
over Ethernet cable. The power to the PoE injector is supplied
externally. The ADS-B aircraft data analysis unit receives data
from the ADS-B data processing unit over Ethernet interface
through Pi PoE switch HAT.
We had kept the ADS-B data processing unit as close as
possible to ADS-B RF front end and powered through PoE
cable with a length of around 100 m. The ADS-B aircraft data
analysis unit is residing in a control room and the receiver
system able to receive the data from the ADS-B equipped
aircrafts from a range of around 470 km. Because of the
atmospheric losses, earth curvature, terrain and other factors
influence the correct reception of the ADS-B messages at
the receiver. We had observed many ADS-B messages are
received with CRC error. This reduces the updation rate of a
particular aircraft at the data analysis unit even though ADS-
B transponder is sending data once per second, aircraft is in
the vicinity of the ADS-B receiver. The updation rate can
be improved by using multiple RTL-SDR’s with separate RF
Front end’s.
The ATC system can not be completely or primarily depen-
dent on the ADS-B system since there is a probability that any
aircrafts capable of turning of the ADS-B transponder system.
Considering the fact that all the flying aircrafts are enabled
with ADS-B system at all times, this system makes the ATC
 This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2017 conference.

I/Q Gain/Phase I/Q Power Preamble Detection PPM Demodulation CRC Validation
Correction calculation

Valid ADS-B Data

I/Q Samples

Fig. 2. Digital Mode-S signal processing system.

Preamble (8 us) Mode-S Data (56 or 112 us) 8 bit 24 bit ICAO 24 bit
Control address parity

Fig. 3. Mode-S frame. Fig. 4. Mode-S short-squitter frame.

much more accurate in comparison with the traditional radar

8 bit 24 bit 56 bit 24 bit
systems. The ADS-B received information greatly helps in
Control ICAO ADS-B parity
developing the radar data processing algorithms to fine tune
address data
them with reference to the ADS-B received information. Also
the surveillance technology aids the radar data processing
system to fuse the received ADS-B information with the Fig. 5. Mode-S extended-squitter frame.
conventional radar data and providing the fused track to
the ATC.
Bit Bit 6- Bit 9- Bit Bit 89-
IV. D IGITAL M ODE -S S IGNAL P ROCESSING S YSTEM
1-5 8 32 33-88 112
The Mode-S signal carries the ADS-B data from aircrafts.
The ADS-B data is modulated with Pulse Position Modulation DF CA ICAO24 DATA PC
(PPM). The block diagram of Digital Mode-S signal process-
ing system is shown in the Fig. 2. The basic building blocks
of an ADS-B receiver communication system contains mainly
I/Q Gain and Phase correction, I/Q sample power calculation, Fig. 6. ADS-B frame.
Preamble detection, PPM demodulation and finally the CRC
validation block. The width of the I/Q sample varies with A/D
converter and the width of valid ADS-B data varies with Short VI. ADS-B F RAME
squitter or Extended Squitter Mode-S data.
The ADS-B frame is a 112-bits long message as shown
V. S HORT S QUITTER AND E XTENDED S QUITTER in Fig. 6. The type of the message can be identified by DF
M ODE -S S IGNAL (Downlink Format) field from bits 1 to 5. If DF = 17 (in
binary “10001”), then it is a ADS-B message.
The Mode-S frame is shown in Fig. 3. The Mode-S frame The DATA field of ADS-B message carries the information
contains preamble and ADS-B data. The length of preamble is like Aircraft identification, surface position, airborne posi-
8 μs and the duration of the short squitter Mode-S data is 56 tion (Baro Alt), airborne velocities, airborne position (GNSS
μs and the extended squitter Mode-S data duration is 112 μs. Height), Test message, surface system status, Extended squitter
The Mode-S short squitter frame format is shown in Fig. 4. AC status, target state and status and aircraft operation status.
It contains 8-bit control, 24-bit ICAO A/C address and 24-bit The identification of ADS-B aircraft information in 56-bit
Parity. It is transmitted once per second and carries only the ADS-B DATA depends on bits Type Code (1-4 of 56-bit
ICAO address, which is a unique aircraft identifier. DATA) as shown in Fig. 7.
The Mode-S extended squitter frame format is shown in
Fig. 5. It contains 8-bit control, 24-bit ICAO address, 56-bit VII. C ONCLUSION
ADS-B data and 24-bit parity. It is also transmitted once per The ADS-B receiver system is developed with various
second and contains ICAO address and 56-bit ADS-B data. sub modules like Antenna, filter, LNA, RTL-SDR, Embedded

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 This full-text paper was peer-reviewed and accepted to be presented at the IEEE WiSPNET 2017 conference.

DF TC Content VIII. F UTURE W ORK

17 1 to 4 Aircraft Identification Improving the updation rate of an aircraft at the ADS-B
aircraft data analysis unit can be attempted by using multiple
17 5 to 8 Surface Position
RTL-SDR’s with separate RF front End units connected to
17 9 to 18 Airborne Position (Baro Alt) single ADS-B data processing unit. Also it is possible to
17 19 Airborne Velocities use the ADS-B data to fine tune the radar data processing
algorithms and fuse the data with the conventional radar data
17 20 to 22 Airborne Position (GNSS Height)
and provide the accurate track information to the ATC.
17 23 Test Message Acknowledgements: Our sincere thanks to Mr.
17 24 Surface system status Ramakrishnan L., Principal Scientist, Mr. C.R. Patil, Group
17 29 Target State and Status Head (EO & RSP) for the opportunity to work on ADS-B,
Dr. Viji Paul Panakkal, M (SRS) and Mr. S. Sivakumar, M
17 30 Reserved (SRS) for the guidance.
17 31 Aircraft Operation Status
R EFERENCES
Fig. 7. ADS-B message types.
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2016].
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is far away from ADS-B receiver system. We had received [4] Mysteries of ADS-B by Flying Magazine. (2005, OCt 29). Retrieved from
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