Future Air Traffic Control Research Articles

A human-centred approach based on functional near-infrared spectroscopy for adaptive decision-making in the air traffic control environment: A case study

Safety-critical systems like air traffic control (ATC) are usually less automated than might be expected by the public, so human intelligence will remain at the core in the decision-making (DM) process. Meanwhile, human factors (HFs) need to be fully considered in the DM process, which can design the ATC system to be more intelligent and more adaptive to the behaviour of the user. However, the existing DM research lacks the systematic methods that fully consider human performance in a smart manner. This study proposed a human-centred adaptive DM methodology that combines subjective and objective measurements made by functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) via intelligent automation (IA). Moreover, this paper also described a case study of radar display map operation, including descriptive and optimised maps, to illustrate the proposed approach and verify its feasibility and effectiveness. The results were determined by jointly considering the user-generated and system-generated data and suggested that the proposed approach could capture subjective and objective data, take into consideration the HFs information to provide real-time online feedback and adjust the decision support system to HFs. It is hoped that this study can promote the methodology of human-centred subjective and objective data-driven applications in the future ATC environment adaptive decision research.

Backward Compatible Physical Layer Protocol Evolution for ADS-B Message Authentication

The automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast system is a pillar of the future air traffic control system. It is a surveillance system in which air planes transmit their information (identity, position, velocity, etc.) in broadcast to any listener equipped with a receiver. Networks of ADS-B receivers have been installed all over the world, producing a clear traffic awareness for air traffic controllers. For historical reasons, this protocol does not have any authentication/encryption mechanism. The aim of this article is to improve the ADS-B system security by introducing a physical layer protocol modification for the introduction of an authentication scheme. The proposed evolution fully complies with the current standard and exploits the phase modulation to increase the number of bits that can be transmitted with a single packet of data. These additional bits can be used to carry authentication information, making the overall system more secure (and safe). The proposed protocol evolution is developed ensuring backward compatibility and respecting the ICAO and RTCA recommendations; it can be introduced and used together with the present standard in a mixed scenario, allowing a smooth transition from the present protocol to the new one. Protocol performances were evaluated by simulations and, moreover, its feasibility and compliance with recommendations were tested using a software-defined radio (as transmitter) and a laboratory ADS-B receiver.

Study on Regional Division of Air Traffic Management in Mainland China in the Future

With the problems of poor coordination and frequent flight delays among major air traffic control regions in mainland China becoming increasingly prominent, a series of air traffic control reform measures are imperative. In order to meet the development need of the transition from a large civil aviation country to power one in the future, it is necessary to divide the air traffic management regions reasonably in advance. Therefore, based on the flights between the airports from 2011 to 2017, this paper combines the grey prediction algorithm with the gravity model and considers the impact of high-speed rail on the flights of civil aviation, then constructs the grey gravity prediction model. According to the forecast result of the future airport flow by the grey gravity prediction model, the flight plans of each airport are generated by using the equal proportion enlargement method. On the basis of the flight plans of each airport, the flight situation in mainland China at a certain time is simulated. According to the simulated aircraft longitude and latitude data, the optimal clustering results are obtained by using the fuzzy C-means clustering algorithm and clustering validity evaluation index. Finally, the clustering results are processed by clustering boundary recognition algorithm, the future air traffic management regional division results in mainland China are obtained. The experimental results show that the prediction accuracy of the grey gravity prediction model considering the influence of high-speed rail is better than the traditional grey prediction algorithm, and the original seven major air traffic control zones in mainland China are re-divided into three major air traffic control zones: North China, South Central China and Northwest China, which can provide reference for future air traffic control reform and development.

РАЗРАБОТКА ПРОГРАММЫ ПРОЕКТИРОВАНИЯ СИМУЛЯТОРОВ СОВРЕМЕННЫХ РАДИОТЕХНИЧЕСКИХ СРЕДСТВ ОБЕСПЕЧЕНИЯ ПОЛЕТОВ

The main radio equipment used by aviation specialists are communication, radar and radio navigation systems. Training of students in these areas is a complex task that requires significant efforts of lecturer. The article proposes a concept of simulator designing that are supposed to be adopted in the educational process of civil aviation institutions based on hybrid approach to the virtual simulators designing. Such concept was applied in the development of methodology for designing of simulators for flight electronic support, which involves solving the problem of selective structural synthesis. The problem of selective structural synthesis of design solutions is described using a morphological tree and implies finding the graph edge that ensures meeting a set of rules with the constraints specified in the process of specification drawing up, which is replenished by the developer-user. Due to random nature, the structural optimization method implies a sequential search for possible options. A computer-aided system of simulator designing for flight electronic support systems was developed based on the methodology. The development of a computer-aided system of simulator designing for radio communications, radar and navigation equipment makes it possible to provide effective training of future pilots and air traffic control officers.

Design implications for teamwork in ATC

In air traffic control (ATC), teamwork is a key component among air traffic control operators (ATCOs) to safely direct the aircraft through the sky and on the ground. To be able to design for future ATC systems, we must understand how ATCOs work together, their teamwork, and how they experience and perceive teamwork, in different ATC environments. We conducted interviews with 16 ATCOs working in four different ATC environments (en-route control, terminal area control, tower control for a small airport and tower control for a large airport in Sweden) and analysed the results in the light of the “Big Five” model of teamwork. The main contributions of this paper are to show: (1) how eight teamwork factors are differently manifested by the ATCOs in the different ATC environments, (2) that teamwork in ATC is important during routine operations, during stressful work, and during abnormal situations, and (3) that the design of the organisation, the environment, and the tools, affects teamwork and the importance of different teamwork factors.

Multiple-Path Erasure Coding for Future Air Traffic Control Communications

The air traffic control data communications performance is measured using the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Required Communication Performance metric. The metric’s values proposed by Eurocontrol and the Federal Aviation Administration to support the future data-centric air traffic control communications will only be achievable using a new, air–ground data link with low latency and low loss. In this Paper, we propose using erasure coding to generate redundancy and transmitting over multiple links, each with higher latency and/or higher loss than the single link. We propose a model to calculate the expected performance using multiple links and erasure coding based on the different links characteristics, the coding rate, and the encoded packet distribution over the links. Then, we present the results of using the model to calculate the characteristics of multiple new air–ground data links that support the requirements of the future air traffic control communications, and we compare them with the results of a single link.

Designing the Air–Ground Data Links for Future Air Traffic Control Communications

The future air traffic management in Europe and the USA is being defined by the SESAR and NextGen programs, respectively. In the mid-2020s, air-ground air traffic control communications will be primarily data-centric as opposed to current voice-centric communications. The International Civilian Aviation Organization has proposed the required communication performance (RCP) metric to define the requirements to support the new data communication services. In this paper, we propose a model to calculate the expected performance using the RCP metric based on the air-ground data link characteristics. Then, we present the results of using the model to obtain the characteristics that an air-ground data link must have to support the future ATC communication requirements proposed by Eurocontrol and the Federal Aviation Administration.

РЕАЛІЗАЦІЯ ПЕДАГОГІЧНОЇ УМОВИ «АКТУАЛІЗАЦІЯ ПРОФЕСІЙНОЇ РЕФЛЕКСІЇ» У ФАХОВІЙ ПІДГОТОВЦІ МАЙБУТНІХ ДИСПЕТЧЕРІВ УПРАВЛІННЯ ПОВІТРЯНИМ РУХОМ

РЕАЛІЗАЦІЯ ПЕДАГОГІЧНОЇ УМОВИ «АКТУАЛІЗАЦІЯ ПРОФЕСІЙНОЇ РЕФЛЕКСІЇ» У ФАХОВІЙ ПІДГОТОВЦІ МАЙБУТНІХ ДИСПЕТЧЕРІВ УПРАВЛІННЯ ПОВІТРЯНИМ РУХОМ

Supervising High Degree Automation in Simulated Air Traffic Control

Implementing high degree automation in future air traffic control (ATC) systems will be crucial for coping with increased air traffic demand and maintaining safety. However, issues associated with the passive monitoring role assumed by operators in these systems continue to be of concern. Passive monitoring can lead to a range of human operator performance problems when overseeing automation. The performance cost when human operators are placed in a passive monitoring role has been conceptualized as the out-of-the-loop (OOTL) performance problem: where adding more automation to a system makes it less likely that the operator will notice an automation failure and intervene appropriately (Endsley & Kiris, 1995). The OOTL performance problem has been attributed to numerous factors including vigilance decrements, fatigue, task disengagement, and poor situation awareness. This study tested two different approaches to addressing the OOTL performance problem associated with high degree automation in a simulation of en-route ATC (ATC-labAdvanced; Fothergill, Loft, & Neal, 2009). Following a 60-min training and practice session, 115 university student participants completed two 30-min ATC scenarios; one under manual control and one where they supervised high degree automation (counterbalanced order). The automation performed all acceptances for aircraft entering the sector of controlled airspace, handed off all departing aircraft, and resolved all conflicts between aircraft pairs that would otherwise have violated the minimum safe separation standards (except for a single automation failure event). Participants were instructed that the automation was highly reliable, but not infallible. The first aim was to confirm that while high degree automation can reduce workload, it can also lead to increased task disengagement and fatigue when compared to manual control. Furthermore, to determine how well participants supervised the automation, the conflict detection automation failed once late in the automation scenario. This failure involved two aircraft violating the minimum lateral and vertical separation standard and being missed by the automation. We expected to find that participants would fail to detect this conflict more often, or be slower to detect it, when under automation conditions, compared to a comparable conflict event presented when under manual control. Our second aim was to investigate whether these costs of automation could be ameliorated by techniques designed to improve task engagement. Participants were assigned to one of three automation conditions, including automation with (1) no acknowledgements, (2) acknowledgments, or (3) queries. In the no acknowledgements condition, automation failure monitoring was the only task performed. In the acknowledgements condition, similar to Pop et al. (2012), participants were additionally instructed to click to acknowledge each automated action, thereby potentially improving engagement by adding an active component to an otherwise passive monitoring task. In the queries condition, participants were queried regarding the past, present, and future state of aircraft on the display. The goal was to help participants maintain an accurate mental model (aka. situation awareness) when using automation. We found that automation reduced workload, increased disengagement and fatigue, and impaired detection of a single conflict detection failure event compared to manual task performance. Consistent with previous research, this shows that as a higher degree of automation is added to a system, it becomes less likely that the operator will notice automation failures and intervene appropriately (e.g. Pop et al., 2012). The first intervention tested whether adding automation acknowledgement requirements to the task made it easier for participants to detect and resolve a single automation failure event. The results showed that there was no difference between automation with and without acknowledgement requirements on workload, task disengagement, fatigue, and the detection of the automation failure event. The second intervention tested whether adding queries regarding aircraft on the display would improve failure detection performance. The queries intervention successfully reduced task disengagement and trended towards reducing fatigue, while workload was maintained at a level similar to that of manual control. These findings suggest that the manipulation successfully reduced some of the subjective deficits associated with the passive monitoring of automation. However, there was a significant cost to participants’ ability to detect and resolve the automation failure event relative to manual performance, where half the participants in the queries condition missed the automation failure entirely, compared to 25% in the no queries condition. Response times to detect the failure event were also considerably longer when queries were included compared to no queries. One explanation is that the queries condition may have been engaging to the point of distraction. This is supported by qualitative information provided by participants, where 40% mentioned that they found the queries to be distracting. Future studies may wish to examine the effectiveness of auditory queries instead of visual queries, potentially with verbal instead of typed responses. This may allow queries to reduce task disengagement and fatigue while potentially improving participants’ ability to intervene to automation failures.

UAT ADS-B Data Anomalies and the Effect of Flight Parameters on Dropout Occurrences

An analysis of the performance of automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) data received from the Grand Forks, North Dakota International Airport was carried out in this study. The purpose was to understand the vulnerabilities of the universal access transceiver (UAT) ADS-B system and recognize the effects on present and future air traffic control (ATC) operation. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandated all the general aviation aircraft to be equipped with ADS-B. The aircraft flying within United States and below the transition altitude (18,000 feet) are more likely to install a UAT ADS-B. At present, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and autonomous air traffic control (ATC) towers are being integrated into the aviation industry and UAT ADS-B is a basic sensor for both class 1 and class 2 detect-and-avoid (DAA) systems. As a fundamental component of future surveillance systems, the anomalies and vulnerabilities of the ADS-B system need to be identified to enable a fully-utilized airspace with enhanced situational awareness. The data received was archived in GDL-90 format, which was parsed into readable data. The anomaly detection of ADS-B messages was based on the FAA ADS-B performance assessment report. The data investigation revealed ADS-B message suffered from different anomalies including dropout, missing payload, data jump, low confidence data, and altitude discrepancy. Among those studied, the most severe was dropout and 32.49% of messages suffered from this anomaly. Dropout is an incident where ADS-B failed to update within a specified rate. Considering the potential danger being imposed, an in-depth analysis was carried out to characterize message dropout. Three flight parameters were selected to investigate their effect on dropout. Statistical analysis was carried out and the Friedman Statistical Test identified that altitude affected dropout more than any other flight parameter.

Understanding teamwork errors in royal air force air traffic control

Despite the success of Crew Resource Management (CRM) training in aviation and the development and implementation of Team Resource Management (TRM) in civil Air Traffic Management (ATM), the Royal Air Force (RAF) is yet to embrace a dedicated, Air Traffic Control (ATC)-specific TRM training programme for its controllers. In order to ascertain the extent to which teamwork-related errors are contributing to RAF ATM incidents, the first part of this study involved analysis of data from incident reports. Using the outputs from the first study, the second part of the study involved interviews with current controllers at Terminal Units in order to understand their perceptions of team, teamwork and teamwork errors in ATC and identify any deficiencies. Both co-located and geographically dislocated teams were considered. The findings showed that controllers have a strong sense of team cohesion and understand the behaviours required for successful teamwork, but have limited appreciation for the cognitive aspects of teamwork, which is where errors are manifesting in incidents. This improved understanding of deficiencies will provide a foundation for future RAF ATC TRM training development.

Trajectory-Planning of Arrival Aircrafts Aiming at Adjustment of Separation and Fair Sharing of Noise by Aircraft Vectoring

The increasing amount of air traffic has escalated both the damage caused by aircraft noise and the workload on air traffic controllers. Future air traffic control systems are expected to ensure a fair distribution of aircraft noise to reduce the damage per capita. In this paper, we propose an automatic trajectory-planning algorithm that disperses arriving trajectories simultaneously with adjusting arrival time and avoiding other aircrafts during flight to reduce the noise per capita on the ground surrounding the arrival route. This method estimates the noise on the ground by identifying in advance ground points at one kilometer intervals. Each ground point has a noise index that is calculated by a weight and a sound propagation model for every aircraft trajectory. The proposed method also estimates the time of arrival of each aircraft and adjusts the error from the required time of arrival to zero by making detours or shortcuts from the nominal route. It also considers other aircrafts and avoids confliction during flight by making detours.

Ecological interface design: supporting fault diagnosis of automated advice in a supervisory air traffic control task

Future air traffic control will have to rely on more advanced automation to support human controllers in their job of safely handling increased traffic volumes. A prerequisite for the success of such automation is that the data driving it are reliable. Current technology, however, still warrants human supervision in coping with (data) uncertainties and consequently in judging the quality and validity of machine decisions. In this study, ecological interface design was used to assist controllers in fault diagnosis of automated advice, using a prototype ecological interface (called the solution space diagram) for tactical conflict detection and resolution in the horizontal plane. Results from a human-in-the-loop simulation, in which sixteen participants were tasked with monitoring automation and intervening whenever required or desired, revealed a significant improvement in fault detection and diagnosis in a complex traffic scenario. Additionally, the experiment also exposed interesting interaction patterns between the participants and the advisory system, which seemed unrelated to the fault diagnosis task. Here, the explicit means-ends links appeared to have affected participants’ control strategy, which was geared toward taking over control from automation, regardless of the fault condition. This result suggests that in realizing effective human-automation teamwork, finding the right balance between offering more insight (e.g., through ecological interfaces) and striving for compliance with single (machine) advice is an avenue worth exploring further.

Benefits of Imperfect Conflict Resolution Advisory Aids for Future Air Traffic Control

The aim of this study was to examine the human-automation interaction issues and the interacting factors in the context of conflict detection and resolution advisory (CRA) systems. The issues of imperfect automation in air traffic control (ATC) have been well documented in previous studies, particularly in conflict-alerting systems. The extent to which the prior findings can be applied to an integrated conflict detection and resolution system in future ATC remains unknown. Twenty-four participants were evenly divided into two groups corresponding to a medium- and a high-traffic density condition, respectively. In each traffic density condition, participants were instructed to perform simulated ATC tasks under four automation conditions, including reliable, unreliable with short time allowance to secondary conflict (TAS), unreliable with long TAS, and manual conditions. Dependent variables accounted for conflict resolution performance, workload, situation awareness, and trust in and dependence on the CRA aid, respectively. Imposing the CRA automation did increase performance and reduce workload as compared with manual performance. The CRA aid did not decrease situation awareness. The benefits of the CRA aid were manifest even when it was imperfectly reliable and were apparent across traffic loads. In the unreliable blocks, trust in the CRA aid was degraded but dependence was not influenced, yet the performance was not adversely affected. The use of CRA aid would benefit ATC operations across traffic densities. CRA aid offers benefits across traffic densities, regardless of its imperfection, as long as its reliability level is set above the threshold of assistance, suggesting its application for future ATC.

Uncertainty management in enroute air traffic control: a field study exploring controller strategies and requirements for automation

The management of uncertainty is a critical aspect of current as well as future air traffic control operations. This study investigated: (1) sources of uncertainty in enroute air traffic control, (2) strategies that air traffic controllers adopt to cope with uncertainty, (3) the trade-offs and contingencies that influences the adoption of these uncertainties, and (4) the requirements for system design that support controllers in following these strategies. The data were collected using a field study in two enroute air traffic control centres, involving "over the shoulder" observation sessions, discussions with air traffic controllers, and document analysis. Three types of uncertainty coping strategies were identified: reducing uncertainty, acknowledging uncertainty, and increasing uncertainty. The RAWFS heuristic (Lipshitz and Strauss in Organ Behav Hum Decis Process 69:149---163, 1997) and anticipatory thinking (Klein et al. in Anticipatory thinking, Proceedings of the eighth international NDM conference, Pacific Grove, CA, 2007) were used to identify reduction and acknowledgement strategies. Recent suggestions by Grote (Saf Sci 71:71---79, 2015) were used to further explore strategies that increase uncertainty. The study presents a new framework for the classification of uncertainties in enroute air traffic control and identified the uncertainty management strategies and underlying tactics, in context of contingencies and trade-offs between operational goals. The results showed that controllers, in addition to reducing and acknowledging uncertainty, may deliberately increase uncertainty in order to increase flexibility for other actors in the system to meet their operational goals. The study describes new tactics for acknowledging and increasing uncertainty. The findings were summarized in the air traffic controller complexity and uncertainty management model. Additionally, the results bring to light system design recommendations that allow controllers to follow these different coping strategies, including (1) the design of alerts, (2) the transparency of prediction tools, and (3) system flexibility as a requirement for acknowledging and increasing uncertainty. The results are particularly important as uncertainty is likely to increase in future operations of enroute air traffic control, requiring automation support for controllers. Implications for future air traffic management scenarios as envisioned within the SESAR Joint Undertaking (SESAR JU in European ATM Master Plan, 2 eds, 2012) and NextGen (FAA in FAA's NextGen implementation plan, 2014) operational concepts are discussed.

An Adaptive Time-Series Probabilistic Framework for 4-D Trajectory Conformance Monitoring

Trajectory conformance monitoring is important for future air traffic control for reasons associated with optimal operation, increased safety, and improved efficiency. In this study, conformance monitoring is considered with respect to preassigned 4-D (space and time) trajectories and their margins (4-D contracts), and an adaptive time-series probabilistic framework is postulated. Two problems are tackled, and proper methods are developed: 1) present conformance monitoring and quality of conformance evaluation via statistical tools, which leads to abnormal event detection; and 2) future conformance monitoring in which conformance is predicted ahead of time allowing for the early initiation of corrective actions. The framework is based on recursive integrated autoregressive modeling of contract deviations alone, with the underlying dynamics and nonstationarity accounted for. An initial assessment of the performance of the framework is based on two simulation scenarios. Through them, present conformance monitoring is shown to lead to quality assessment and the declaration of an alarm immediately following the emergence of an abnormal event. Future conformance monitoring is shown to lead to an early nonconformance alarm, with the lead time shown to be significantly longer than that achieved by a current probabilistic benchmark scheme.

Ecological Interface Design: Sensor Failure Diagnosis in Air Traffic Control

Future air traffic control will have to rely on more advanced automation in order to support controllers in their job of safely controlling increased traffic volumes. A prerequisite for the success of such automation is that the underlying data driving it is reliable. Current technology, however, still warrants human supervision in coping with (data) uncertainties and consequently in judging the validity of machine decisions. In this paper the Ecological Interface Design (EID) framework is explored to assist controllers in fault diagnosis using a prototype ecological interface (called the Solution Space Diagram) for tactical conict detection and resolution in the horizontal plane. Results from a human-in-the-loop experiment with sixteen participants indicate that the ecological interface with explicit presentation of the means-ends relations between higher-level functional goals and lower-level physical objects (i.e., aircraft) enables improved sensor failure detection. Especially in high complexity scenarios, this feature had a positive impact on failure detection performance.

Human factors assessment of conflict resolution aid reliability and time pressure in future air traffic control

Though it has been reported that air traffic controllers' (ATCos') performance improves with the aid of a conflict resolution aid (CRA), the effects of imperfect automation on CRA are so far unknown. The main objective of this study was to examine the effects of imperfect automation on conflict resolution. Twelve students with ATC knowledge were instructed to complete ATC tasks in four CRA conditions including reliable, unreliable and high time pressure, unreliable and low time pressure, and manual conditions. Participants were able to resolve the designated conflicts more accurately and faster in the reliable versus unreliable CRA conditions. When comparing the unreliable CRA and manual conditions, unreliable CRA led to better conflict resolution performance and higher situation awareness. Surprisingly, high time pressure triggered better conflict resolution performance as compared to the low time pressure condition. The findings from the present study highlight the importance of CRA in future ATC operations.Practitioner Summary: Conflict resolution aid (CRA) is a proposed automation decision aid in air traffic control (ATC). It was found in the present study that CRA was able to promote air traffic controllers' performance even when it was not perfectly reliable. These findings highlight the importance of CRA in future ATC operations.

Satellite Handover Techniques for LEO Networks Serving Air Traffic Control Communication

Satellite systems are a perfect alternative system to cover wide areas on the earth, especially oceans and desert areas, and to provide broadband communications to all aircraft. Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations are important in future air traffic control (ATC) communication networks due to their advantages, such as whole global coverage and low propagation time. However, the satellites are not stationary; a contact between aircraft and satellite may be subjected to handovers. Many techniques have been proposed in order to deal with the cell handover issue. In this paper, the Handover procedure implication in the communication blocking probability is estimated via simulation. To reduce the high number of Handovers, some strategies are used to cope with. Simulation models have been developed to improve all the features evaluated in this paper.

定期便フライトデータと気象庁数値予報GPVデータとの比較評価

Flight trajectory optimization as well as trajectory based operations is considered as a key concept of future air traffic control system. Now, one of the significant subjects is to clarify the accuracy of numerical weather data such as wind speed or wind direction, which is used for calculation of flight trajectory optimization and trajectory prediction. In this study, the accuracy evaluation of numerical prediction GPV (Grid Point Value) data published from JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) is assumed to be possible by comparing with flight data provided from an airline company. Accuracy of static air temperature and wind speed of GSM (Global Spectral Model) and MSM (Meso-Scale Model) weather data are evaluated and measured by RMSE (Root Mean Square Error). The analysis shows that temperature and wind RMSE of GSM and MSM initial time data are less than 2 degrees and 5 m/s respectively. It is also revealed that forecast data of GSM provides greater precision than MSM by referring to the obtained RMSE.