This application written for the Mode-S Beast Receiver. This is a great little reciever that is based on an FPGA. It would be difficult to adapt it to another receiver, as these things all have different binary protocols to snag the data off of them.
The program processes the serial port data (ignores the Mode-AC if enabled) and creates data structures in order to decode the data. This decoded information is placed in a MySQL database. Multiple receivers can be used, each running this application and using a separate radar_site identification in the configuration file.
When new tracks are detected, their Mode-S ICAO number is added to the icao_list table by a trigger, and a track is created in the tracks table. This table has the quality and active status. Sooner or later this target will land or fade-out, and the track is marked inactive. If it pops-up again, it is marked active again.
The US registration (N-Number) are also added to the targets after the ICAO number is received. These are assigned 1:1 in the US. No other countries are decoded.
There are tables to store the velocities, altitudes, amplitudes, etc. These tables are updated each time the internal tracks are updated.
You must have MySQL installed. Currently version 9.0 is used for development. Import the .sql file to create the database, tables, and trigger.
You will need OpenJDK 64-bit Java version 22 or newer. Create a directory for the application, and move the lib and .jar file into it. Also copy the .conf file and edit it. The lib directory contains two files: the serial port connector, and the database connector. The application won't run without them. Your Windows PATH setting will also need to be modified to include the Java Home directory. Start the program on the command-line using:
java -jar ModeSDecoder.jar
The Mode-S data received has a lot of redundancy in it. Each target may transmit identical information to several radar sites. You will often see three or four transmissions with the same exact data. This application divides the Mode-S into two queues, one for short blocks and one for long. Since the long blocks are used to calculate position, this data is not filtered. On the other hand, the short block duplicates are dropped. This greatly reduces the work of decoding the information, and storing it in the database.
The Mode-S long blocks have some interesting TCAS data transmitted, and this is stored in the tcas_alert table which is referenced to the icao_list table for both this track ICAO and the threat track ICAO if known.
Airborne tracks transmit their altitude based on a standard 29.92 Hg pressure. This altitude may be higher or lower based on the current airport altimeter. The application connects with a NOAA weather site, and the airport selected in your config file is used to collect the current altimeter. This value is then used to provide a correction based on the Pressure altitude. This data is stored in the airport_data table. The correction value is stored in the tracks table for other applications to use. (TODO).
If there is no airport listed in the .conf configuration file, this feature is not turned on, and nulls are inserted. This may be desireable if the site has no Internet access.
Apache NetBeans IDE 22
Java: 22.0.1; OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM 22.0.1+8-16
Runtime: OpenJDK Runtime Environment 22.0.1+8-16
System: Windows 11 version 10.0 running on amd64; UTF-8; en_US (nb)