Latest developments in AWAS: the Advanced Weather Awareness System in the COAST Project

Abstract

In the framework of the COAST (Cost Optimized Avionics SysTem) project funded by Clean Sky 2 Joint Undertaking in the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, several key technologies are under development, aimed to enable single pilot operations of Small Air Transport (SAT) vehicles. One of these technologies is AWAS (Advanced Weather Awareness System), which aims to provide and visualize on board of the aircraft updated weather information regarding areas affected by weather hazards, in order to increase the weather awareness of the pilot. The system is composed by three main components: AWAS on-ground, devoted to generate and provide on board data regarding weather hazards observed and forecast along the flight route; AWAS on-board, aimed to send on-ground information concerning aircraft position and current time and to elaborate data provided by AWAS on-ground; AWAS Human Machine Interface (HMI), that visualize data on-board over a Portable Electronic Device (PED). AWAS on-ground and AWAS on-board segments are connected each other via a low-cost satellite communication system. The meteorological information is extracted from MATISSE (Meteorological AviaTIon Supporting System), a prototype software developed by the Meteorology Laboratory of CIRA. This paper describes the main functionalities and components of the system under development, highlighting the advancements achieved with respect to the one presented in 2020, and the work performed to allow the on-board integration of AWAS system. Furthermore, the paper reports the main results obtained during the dedicated flight test campaign successfully completed in summer 2021, validating the technology when integrated into the aircraft.