Abstract
With the rapidly increasing air traffic demand, the demand-capacity imbalance problem of sector is surfaced gradually. And, minute-in-trail/miles-in-trail (MIT) is an effective strategy to balance the traffic demands and capacity. In this work, we consider the MIT strategy generation problem for the situation that a sector with NC corridors is affected by convection weather for Timb time periods. Given the sector capacity Cwt, t=1,…,Timb, under convection weather, we propose a three-phase optimization framework to generate E-MIT strategy to achieve the demand-capacity balance. First, we take the sector capacity of Timb time periods under convection weather as a whole, that is, ∑t=1TimbCwt, and then a dynamical programming-based method is proposed to allocate ∑t=1TimbCwt for NC corridors such that the capacity resources Awi of each corridor CORi, i=1,…,NC, can be determined. Second, a 0-1 combination algorithm is used to allocate the capacity resources Awi into Timb time periods for each corridor CORi such that the candidate strategies set CSi of each corridor can be determined, where a strategy solji∈CSi is an array with Timb numbers and each number represents the maximum allowed number of flights entering into sector from CORi in one time period. Finally, a modified shortest path algorithm based on the backtracking method is taken to select the optimal strategy from CSi for NC corridors such that the total delay cost and air traffic control load are minimized. Additionally, a dynamical programming-based method is proposed to generate E-MIT strategy for the special case that the sector capacities of different time periods under convection weather are the same, that is, Cw1=Cw2=⋯=CwTimb, and the generated strategies of Timb time periods for a corridor are also the same. Experimental results show that compared with the proposed three-phase optimization method, rate-based method and need-based method will spend more 8.1% and 6.3% of delay cost, respectively. When considering the special case, the experimental results show that compared with the proposed dynamical programming-based method, the rate-based method and need-based method will spend more 10.2% and 7.5% of delay cost, respectively.
Highlights
With the rapidly growing air traffic demands, air traffic control load [1] is increased, and the air traffic problems [2,3,4], such as air traffic congestion, the demand-capacity imbalance problem [5], and flight delays [6], are surfaced gradually
We consider the MIT strategy generation problem for the situation that a sector with NC corridors is affected by convection weather for Timb time periods
A 0-1 combination algorithm is used to allocate the capacity resources Aiw into Timb time periods for each corridor CORi such that the candidate strategies set CSi of each corridor can be determined, where a strategy solij ∈ CSi is an array with Timb numbers and each number represents the maximum allowed number of flights entering into sector from CORi in one time period
Summary
With the rapidly growing air traffic demands, air traffic control load [1] is increased, and the air traffic problems [2,3,4], such as air traffic congestion, the demand-capacity imbalance problem [5], and flight delays [6], are surfaced gradually. The demand-capacity imbalance problem is often occurred, when capacity has been reduced due to the convection weather. The demand-capacity imbalance problem can be dealt with in two ways [7]. One is the long-term strategy through the construction of infrastructure, such as new airports and runways to enlarge capacity. This procedure would take a long time and high cost. E second way is to regulate the traffic flow by using the traffic management initiatives (TMIs) [8], such that the limited capacity can be used efficiently and the impact of unavoidable delays would be reduced [9]. The TMIs can be classified into two categories: (1) strategic actions, which are the strategies that taken before the aircraft has been taken off, including ground delay program [10], ground stop [11], airspace flow program [12], minute-in-trail or miles-in-trail [13], and Collaborative Trajectory Options Program [14] and (2) tactical actions, which are the strategies that taken after the aircraft is airborne, consisting of rerouting [15], speed adjustment, airborne holding [16], and fix balancing
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