Sky Air Traffic Management Research Research Articles

Harmonization and Verification of Three National European Icing Forecast Models Using Pilot Reports

The Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) program aims at modernizing and harmonizing the European airspace, which currently has a strongly fragmented character. Besides turbulence and convection, in-flight icing is part of SESAR and can be seen as one of the most important meteorological phenomena, which may lead to hazardous flight conditions for aircraft. In this study, several methods with varying complexities are analyzed for combining three individual in-flight icing forecasts based on numerical weather prediction models from Deutscher Wetterdienst, Météo-France, and Met Office. The optimal method will then be used to operate one single harmonized in-flight icing forecast over Europe. As verification data, pilot reports (PIREPs) are used, which provide information about hazardous weather and are currently the only direct regular measure of in-flight icing events available. In order to assess the individual icing forecasts and the resulting combinations, the probability of detection skill score is calculated based on multicategory contingency tables for the forecast icing intensities. The scores are merged into a single skill score to give an overview of the quality of the icing forecast and enable comparison of the different model combination approaches. The concluding results show that the most complex combination approach, which uses iteratively optimized weighting factors for each model, provides the best forecast quality according to the PIREPs. The combination of the three icing forecasts results in a harmonized icing forecast that exceeds the skill of each individual icing forecast, thus providing an improvement to in-flight icing forecasts over Europe.

Importance of Weather Conditions in a Flight Corridor

Current research initiatives, such as the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research Program, call for an air traffic system with improved safety and efficiency records and environmental compatibility. The resulting multi-criteria system optimization and individual flight trajectories require, in particular, reliable three-dimensional meteorological information. The Global (Weather) Forecast System only provides data at a resolution of around 100 km. We postulate a reliable interpolation at high resolution to compute these trajectories accurately and in due time to comply with operational requirements. We investigate different interpolation methods for aerodynamic crucial weather variables such as temperature, wind speed, and wind direction. These methods, including Ordinary Kriging, the radial basis function method, neural networks, and decision trees, are compared concerning cross-validation interpolation errors. We show that using the interpolated data in a flight performance model emphasizes the effect of weather data accuracy on trajectory optimization. Considering a trajectory from Prague to Tunis, a Monte Carlo simulation is applied to examine the effect of errors on input (GFS data) and output (i.e., Ordinary Kriging) on the optimized trajectory.

Optimal Contract for Reducing Flight Delays in EU: In the Context of SESAR

In the context of the SESAR (Single European Sky Air traffic management Research) Joint Undertaking, the role that the air navigation service provider (ANSP) could play has been reconsidered. ANSP manages traffic and deals with potential conflict situations and external events, which have led to the reorganization of the air traffic. The modification of traffic inevitably leads to delays for airlines, which is costly. In this study, we suggest that ANSP could provide a costly delay reduction service to airlines. Indeed, if ANSP has several solutions for traffic conflict resolution or reorganization, there is room for a choice between these solutions using additional criteria. Our study thus proposes an original model in which we determine the optimal design of a delay reduction contract signed between welfare- or profit-maximizing ANSPs and a monopoly airline. We give some comparative statics, in particular, the evaluation of the impact of a modification in safety standards on the contract.

High Performance Implementation of Next Generation Aeronautical Communication Systems

Current air traffic communication systems are mainly based on voice communication, with a newer digital communication technology called L-Band Digital Aeronautical Communication System (LDACS) being investigated in the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) project. An essential feature of this communication infrastructure is the encoding of data that guarantees reliable transport. While the encoding in the transmission path is straightforward, the decoding is computationally expensive due to the peculiarities of the convolutional codes used. As the target platform for the communication equipment is an embedded system, a proper system design is essential for the receiving path to ensure real-time processing. This paper therefore focuses on the hardware/software co-design of the functional system parts needed for decoding in the LDACS radio receiver. We describe the fundamental design considerations, followed by the actual implementation in form of software and FPGA-based hardware modules. Subsequently, the decoding solution was verified to prove a standard-compliant system. In an experimental validation, the actual system was fed with test data from a reference system. This allows conclusions to be drawn about system characteristics like data throughput, latency, and error correction. The resulting system demonstrates high-performance decoding that can exceed the desired requirements for quality and speed for use in the LDACS communication system.

The effect of the Croatian Free Route Airspace implementation on the Air Traffic Complexity

It is well known that the increase in air traffic brings some negative connotations regarding delays, airspace capacity, air traffic controller workload, etc. To mitigate those problems, the European Commission has issued a development plan through the Single European Sky initiative, which yields a dozen solutions through the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research Joint Undertaking. Some of which is Free Route Airspace which enables aircraft operators to fly and plan direct routes through the airspace. Since this solution changes the way that the aircraft flies through airspace, different and new airspace routes have emerged. In this paper, the authors used fast time simulations with the PRU complexity model to observe how air traffic complexity was affected through Free Route Airspace implementation. It was observed that the increase in occupancy followed the increase in air traffic complexity, but not all results could be explained through the increase in the occupancy count. Also, to verify suspected claims the pre-FRA traffic from the 2016 was run on the FRA airspace and the reduction of complexity was observed. The authors concluded that the Free Route Airspace helped reduce the overall air traffic complexity, but further research and validation are still needed to concisely confirm those claims.

Calculation of AeroMACS Spectrum Requirements Based on Traffic Simulator.

In this paper, we propose a methodology for calculating the necessary spectrum requirements of aeronautical mobile airport communication system (AeroMACS) to provide various airport communication services. To accurately calculate the spectrum requirement, it is necessary to evaluate the AeroMACS traffic demand of the peak time and statistical data on the packet traffic generated at the airport. Because there is no AeroMACS traffic model and real trace data, we have developed the AeroMACS traffic simulator based on the report of Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR). To calculate the spectrum requirements, the AeroMACS traffic simulator is combined with the methodology of ITU-R M.1768-1. The developed traffic simulator reflects AeroMACS traffic priorities and can generate the required traffic according to its location in the airport. We observed the spectrum requirement by changing the number of sectors and the spectral efficiency. To show the feasibility of our methodology, we applied it to the case of Incheon International Airport in Korea. The simulation results show that the average bandwidth of 0.94 MHz is required in the ground area and 8.59 MHz is required in the entire airport.

Advanced Flight Planning and the Benefit of In-Flight Aircraft Trajectory Optimization

The implementation of Trajectory-Based Operations, invented by the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research program SESAR, enables airlines to fly along optimized waypoint-less trajectories and accordingly to significantly increase the sustainability of the air transport system in a business with increasing environmental awareness. However, unsteady weather conditions and uncertain weather forecasts might induce the necessity to re-optimize the trajectory during the flight. By considering a re-optimization of the trajectory during the flight they further support air traffic control towards achieving precise air traffic flow management and, in consequence, an increase in airspace and airport capacity. However, the re-optimization leads to an increase in the operator and controller’s task loads which must be balanced with the benefit of the re-optimization. From this follows that operators need a decision support under which circumstances and how often a trajectory re-optimization should be carried out. Local numerical weather service providers issue hourly weather forecasts for the coming hour. Such weather data sets covering three months were used to re-optimize a daily A320 flight from Seattle to New York every hour and to calculate the effects of this re-optimization on fuel consumption and deviation from the filed path. Therefore, a simulation-based trajectory optimization tool was used. Fuel savings between 0.5% and 7% per flight were achieved despite minor differences in wind speed between two consecutive weather forecasts in the order of 0.5 m s−1. The calculated lateral deviations from the filed path within 1 nautical mile were always very small. Thus, the method could be easily implemented in current flight operations. The developed performance indicators could help operators to evaluate the re-optimization and to initiate its activation as a new flight plan accordingly.

Flight Evaluation of Helicopter Curved Point-in-Space Approach Procedures

Helicopter point-in-space instrument procedures are key to enabling simultaneous noninterfering procedures and enhancing all-weather access in dense airspace and remote locations. This paper describes the flight evaluation of navigation and human performance in helicopter curved point-in-space procedures as part of Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research. An experimental procedure was designed at Donauwörth heliport including radius-to-fix legs with descent gradients and airspeed variations in the terminal segments, followed by a steep, straight-in final approach segment. Two strategies were evaluated for vertical descent profiles: fixed flight path angle, and fixed vertical speed. Three test pilots were instructed to execute the entire approach until the missed approach point in simulated instrument meteorological conditions using advanced autopilot modes and head-down flight and navigation displays. Navigation performance was measured using cross-track and vertical-track deviations. Pilot workload and situational awareness were measured using the task load index and the situational awareness rating technique, respectively. The results showed that flight paths were maintained within the required navigation performance limits despite strong crosswinds, and the final approach glidepath was successfully captured in all cases. All pilots reported low workload, adequate spare capacity, and high situational awareness in all cases. Furthermore, the fixed flight path angle descent was found to induce lower workload and required fewer crew actions compared with the fixed vertical speed descent. Owing to the small sample size, conclusions with statistical significance cannot be established.

Collaborative Solutions for Interference Management in GNSS-Based Aircraft Navigation.

Nowadays, the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) technology is not the primary means of navigation for civil aviation and Air Traffic Control, but its role is increasing. Consequently, the vulnerabilities of GNSSs to Radio Frequency Interference, including the dangerous intentional sources of interference (i.e., jamming and spoofing), raise concerns and special attention also in the aviation field. This panorama urges for figuring out effective solutions able to cope with GNSS interference and preserve safety of operations. In the frame of a Single European Sky Air traffic management Research (SESAR) Exploratory Research initiative, a novel, effective, and affordable concept of GNSS interference management for civil aviation has been developed. This new interference management concept is able to raise early warnings to the on-board navigation system about the detection of interfering signals and their classification, and then to estimate the Direction of Arrival (DoA) of the source of interference allowing the adoption of appropriate countermeasures against the individuated source. This paper describes the interference management concept and presents the on-field tests which allowed for assessing the reached level of performance and confirmed the applicability of this approach to the aviation applications.

IMPLEMENTATION PROSPECTS OF THE REMOTE TOWER CONCEPT IN UKRAINE

The real cost of the air travel and air transportation has been decreasing over the past years making air transportation more accessible and thus leading to an increase in the demand for it. This allowed to expand the air connectivity network and provide more destinations for the air travel, including smaller regional airports. One of the components of the cost of the air travel is air navigation service costs for the provision of services by air navigation service providers and these costs are flat-rate costs. For small regional airports with low and/or irregular traffic these costs might be a burden limiting their development. Remote tower concept developed as part of the Single European Sky air traffic management Research program aims at optimising and reducing costs for the provision of air navigation services at small airports allowing them to better utilise resources and improve their profitability. Most of the air traffic in Ukraine is handled by a few strategic airports while small regional airports handle only a few flights a day and in order to provide air traffic services for those flights the regional airports are equipped with local aerodrome control service facilities. Due to the low traffic at the regional airports, resources and facilities aren’t used in the most efficient way. The purpose of this work is to investigate the feasibility of implementation of the remote tower concept at Ukrainian airports to improve the cost efficiency of the provision of air traffic services at the airports and correspondingly decrease the cost of the air travel to the regional airports in Ukraine.

Assessing the Contribution of Data Mining Methods to Avoid Aircraft Run-Off from the Runway to Increase the Safety and Reduce the Negative Environmental Impacts.

The Single Europe Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) program develops and implements innovative technological and operational solutions to modernize European air traffic management and to eliminate the negative environmental impacts of aviation activity. This article presents our developments within the SESAR Solution “Safety Support Tools for Avoiding Runway Excursions”. This SESAR Solution aims to mitigate the risk of runway excursion, to optimize airport operation management by decreasing the number of runway inspections, to make chemical treatment effective with respect to the environment, and to increase resilience, efficiency and safety in adverse weather situations. The proposed approach is based on the enhancement of runway surface condition awareness by integrating data from various sources. Dangerous windy conditions based on Lidar measurements are also discussed as another relevant factor in relation to runway excursions. The paper aims to explore four different data mining methods to obtain runway conditions from the available input data sources, examines their performance and discusses their pros and cons in comparison with a rule-based algorithm approach. The output of the SESAR Solution is developed in compliance with the new Global Reporting Format of the International Civil Aviation Organization for runway condition description to be valid from 2020. This standard is expected to provide concerned stakeholders with more precise information to enhance flight safety and environmental protection.

Human performance assessment of a single air traffic controller conducting multiple remote tower operations

AbstractThe innovative concept of multiple remote tower operations (MRTO) can maximize cost savings by applying video panorama‐based remote tower working positions, which can facilitate fewer air traffic controllers (ATCO) to provide the air traffic services (ATS) function for more airports. Five subject‐matter experts, qualified remote tower ATCOs, participated in this research work by applying the human error template (HET) and comparing workload between physical tower operations and MRTO using NASA‐TLX (Task Load Index). The results demonstrate that augmented visualization provided sufficient technical support for a single ATCO to perform tasks originally designed to be performed by four ATCOs, however, the demands of the associated multiple tasks induced significant workload. There were significant differences in ATCOs’ mental demand, temporal demand, effort, and frustration between MRTO and physical tower operations. This innovative technology may induce human–computer interaction (HCI) issues that impact ATCO's perceived workload. This creates a need for further research on how to manage ATCO's workload in a multiple remote tower environment. This research work provided scientific evidence that MRTO can achieve the objectives of Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research program. The findings can be applied to both ATCO training design and remote tower system design.

Step Toward Remote Tower Center Deployment: Optimizing Staff Schedules

Remote tower service is one of the technological and operational solutions delivered for deployment by the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research Program. This new concept fundamentally changes how operators provide air traffic services as it becomes possible to control several airports from a single remote center. In such settings, an air traffic controller works at a so-called multiple position in the remote center; that is, he/she handles two or more airports from one remote tower module, that is, the controller working position. In this paper, an optimization framework is presented for traffic management at five Swedish airports that were chosen for remote operation using a remote tower center designed to serve a number of airports. The problems experienced with real airport schedules are highlighted, and optimal assignments of the airports to the remote tower modules are presented. Both scheduled traffic and special (nonscheduled) traffic at these five airports are considered.

Surrounding traffic complexity analysis for efficient and stable conflict resolution

The constant increase in air traffic demand increases a probability of the separation minima infringements in certain areas as a consequence of increased traffic density. The Annual Safety Report 2016 reports that in recent years the number of infringements, measured per million flight hours, had been increased at a lower rate (Eurocontrol, 2018). However, this level of infringements still generates a continuous pressure on the air traffic control (ATC) system and seeks for more control resources ready to tactically solve potential conflicts, while increasing at the same time the operational costs. Considering present air traffic management (ATM) trade-off criteria: increased airspace capacity and traffic efficiency but reducing the cost while preserving safety, new services must be designed to distribute the separation management ATC task loads among other actors. Based on the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research and Next Generation Air Transportation System initiatives, this paper proposes an innovative separation management service to shift the completely centralized tactical ATC interventions to more efficient decentralized tactical operations relying on an advanced surrounding traffic analysis tool, to preserve the safety indicators while considering the operational efficiency. A developed methodology for the proposed service is an application-oriented, trying to respond to characteristics and requirements of the current operational environment. The paper further analysis the traffic complexity taking into consideration the so-called domino effect, i.e. a number of the surrounding aircraft causally involved in the separation management service by the means of identification of the spatiotemporal interdependencies between them and the conflicting aircraft. This complexity is driven by the interdependencies structure and expressed as a time-criticality in quantifying the total number of the system solutions, that varies over time as the aircraft are approaching to each other. The results from two randomly selected ecosystem scenarios, extracted from a simulated traffic, illustrate different avoidance capacities for a given look-ahead time and the system solutions counts, that in discrete moments reach zero value.

Characterization of Tropospheric Gradients for the Ground-Based Augmentation System Through the Use of Numerical Weather Models

In the scope of the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) Work Package 15.3.7, a number of research threads are being undertaken to improve the performance of multi-constellation multi-frequency ground-based augmentation system to support CAT II/III precision approaches. Several challenges and key issues must be solved including those related to atmospheric modeling. However, there are a number of arguments for revisiting this topic and specifically addressing the tropospheric threat. First, recent observations, reported at the last International Civil Aviation Organization Navigation System Panel meeting, showed unexpected atmospheric behavior. The source could be related to a non-modeled behavior of the troposphere. Second, in the advent of dual-frequency ground-based augmentation system, the main contributor to the atmospheric error will come from the tropospheric delay. That is why this paper explains a methodology to reassess the tropospheric threat within two main steps: an analysis of European meteorological data and an analysis of a new bounding methodology for dealing with the troposphere threat and its impact on vertical protection levels.

Why a future commercial spacecraft must be able to SWIM

Regarding current as well as future commercial space transportation (CST) projects, new re-entry trajectory profiles, differing from capsule and shuttle-like approaches, have to be taken into account. These characteristics are mainly ruled by the principle of “landing like an aircraft at an airport”. This directly generates the need to be taken in a system wide information management (SWIM) consideration because of the fact, that all the future air traffic participants are requested to act as SWIM communicating sub-systems by the future Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) SWIM “Intranet for ATM” concept. Against the background of the global character of future CST operations and the associated SWIM harmonization need referring the U.S. Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) and SESAR, the presented solution addresses near real-time information sharing for normal air traffic protection purposes in the event of a future space vehicle breakup and bases on the already harmonized data format standards Aeronautical Information Exchange Model (AIXM) and Flight Information Exchange Model (FIXM).

Toward a Single European Sky

To meet rising traffic projections over the next 20 years, Eurocontrol must develop Europe's first uniform air traffic control standards. This case illustrates the usefulness of management science methods for obtaining agreement and commitment among stakeholders. Excerpt UVA-QA-0736 March 26, 2010 Toward a Single European Sky On the journey toward an integrated air traffic management system in Europe by 2020, the key date was January 24, 2007. On that day, the Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research (SESAR) program held a stakeholder forum in Geneva to encourage the entire air transport community to commit to performance targets for future European air traffic management (ATM) systems. For the first time in European air traffic management history, the SESAR consortium brought together all major stakeholders in European aviation, including airspace users, air navigation service providers (ANSPs), airport operators, safety regulators, military organizations, and research centers. In all, the forum comprised 76 people representing 30 stakeholder groups. Eurocontrol The primary objective of Eurocontrol, Europe's air traffic management (ATM) organization, was the development of a seamless, pan-European ATM system. Eurocontrol developed, coordinated, and planned the implementation of European ATM strategies and their associated operational plans in collaboration with national authorities, air navigation service providers (ANSP), civil and military airspace users, airports, manufacturers, professional organizations, and relevant European institutions. Eurocontrol's core activities spanned the entire range of gate-to-gate air navigation service operations, from strategic and tactical-flow management to controller training, from regional control of airspace to the development of leading-edge technologies and procedures. In 2007, Eurocontrol had 38 member states and was headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. The agency had approximately 2,400 staff located in seven European countries and reported to the transport and defense ministers in the European Commission. . . .

Guest Editorial Special Issue on Systematic Approaches to Human–Machine Interface: Improving Resilience, Robustness, and Stability

The papers in this special section focus on systematic approaches to human-machine interface applications. The motivation for this special issue is the growing increase of remote mission management, unmanned aircraft systems, NextGen operations in the U.S. and its Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research counterparts in Europe, and other similarly integrated systems of systems that include complex human–machine systems with high levels of autonomy and team dynamics that are difficult to understand and analyze. The issue explores key research areas that impact the properties of these systems, which rely on varied degrees of human and machine interactions. The special issue is a result of the continued interest in the formal verification of complex human–machine systems.

A Method for SWIM-Compliant Human-in-the-Loop Simulation of Airport Air Traffic Management

System Wide Information Management(SWIM), as envisioned by theSingle European Sky Air Traffic Management Research(SESAR) program, is the application of service oriented architectures to the air traffic management domain. Service oriented architectures are widely deployed in business and finance but usually tied to one specific technological implementation. SWIM goes one step further by defining only the semantic layer of the application integration and leaving the implementation of the communication layer open to the implementer. The shift from legacy communication patterns to SWIM is fundamental for the expected evolution of air traffic management in the next decades. However, the air traffic management simulators currently in use do not reflect this yet. SWIM compliance is defined by semantic compatibility to theAir Traffic Management Information Reference Model(AIRM) and a SWIM service may implement one or more communication profiles, which specify a communication layer implementation. This work proposes a SWIM-compliant communication profile suitable to integrate SWIM-compliant tools into human-in-the-loop simulations for air traffic management research. We achieve this objective by implementing a SWIM communication profile using XML-based multicast messaging and extending the message format to support distributed human-in-the-loop simulations. We demonstrate our method by the evaluation of Hamburg Airport operations.

The future of air traffic management: ATM master plan and SESAR

In this paper we analise the problems of the future development of the system flow management of air traffic with basic aim of overcoming these disadvantages of existing air traffic management system. During the last century Europe did not have, unlike the United States, a joint civilian airspace. European airspace is among the busiest in the world, with over 33,000 flights a day, while the spatial concentration of airports in Europe is very high. These factors make the work of air traffic control in Europe very complex. The existing model of organization of airspace, that is. fragmentation and inefficiency of European air traffic control could not respond to the new needs of air traffic in terms of reducing delays, reducing the price of services, increasing safety and reducing impact on environment. European airlines have expressed in early XXI century the need to accelerate the modernization of air traffic control to maximize efficiency. Single European Sky Air Traffic Management Research Programme (SESAR) brought the innovations that strongly increased efficiency and reduced costs in air transport in Europe. Also, in June 2010, the European and US authorities have reached a preliminary agreement on interoperability between their future systems for air traffic management-SESAR and NextGen (Next Generation Air Transportation System), in order to overcome the fragmentation and inefficiency of the system for air traffic management, reduce delays and achieve significant savings in fuel.