Estimation of Airspeed Using Continuous Polynomial Adaptive Estimator

The tendency for Pitot tubes aboard airplanes to malfunction during flight has been shown to be problematic. Pitot tubes provide information regarding dynamic pressure to the airplane during flight, which can be used to calculate its airspeed. The ability to estimate airspeeds while a Pitot tube is malfunctioning could help to minimize aircraft accidents resulting from Pitot tube failures. Airspeed estimation was formulated as a nonlinear parameter estimation problem. Continuous Polynomial Adaptive Estimator (CPAE) was applied to the problem and simulated. This analysis showed that the estimated values converge correctly, and there are hopes to implement this in real world systems in order to prevent aforementioned disasters experienced during Pitot tube failure.