A Demonstration of an Aircraft Intent Interchange Specification for Facilitating Trajectory-Based Operations in the National Airspace System

Abstract

International research into Air Traffic Management technologies has accelerated over the last ten years. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and EUROCONTROL each have ongoing research in Trajectory-Based Management in their efforts to decrease Air Traffic Controller workload while increasing air traffic capacity and reducing the effects of adverse weather conditions and bottleneck areas. Additionally, each of these organizations has interest in standardizing developing technologies. Towards this end, the FAA and the Boeing Company have established a Cooperative Research & Development Agreement designed to facilitate development in Trajectory-Based Operations. To initiate this cooperative research, the Target Generation Facility (TGF) of the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center has conducted concept demonstration research of a promising specification standard: the Aircraft Intent Description Language (AIDL), developed by Boeing Research & Technology Europe. AIDL is a formal language for the unambiguous definition of aircraft trajectories. It is intended as a univocal, rigorous, and standardized manner to interchange aircraft intent information for ATM purposes. The purpose of the TGF research was to demonstrate the concept that AIDL can be used to interchange aircraft intent information to a trajectory predictor and to an aircraft simulator and that the resultant predicted and simulated trajectories would be compatible. This study used the TGF Trajectory Predictor (TP) and the TGF Simulator. An interface compatible with AIDL was developed for each. The results of this study show that AIDL can be used to efficiently and completely define an aircraft trajectory, can be used to interchange aircraft intent information, and will result in compatible trajectories in a TP and a flight simulator.

Existence and Determination of Separation-Compliant Speed Control in Terminal Airspace

“…The extension of the algorithm to path control is a topic for further research. In addition, more effort must be made to ensure that the solution is flyable in terms of aircraft dynamics, landing speed, communication delays, and system operations [21]. …”

“…The polytopes Q j k−1;k belonging to P k−1;k are indexed by j 1; : : : ; 2 Mk , where Mk is given in Eq. (21). The first of these, explicitly written…”

4D trajectory estimation based on nominal flight profile extraction and airway meteorological forecast revision

“…The fitting degree for h 5 was calculated as γ (h 5 ) = 93.23% via equation (6). Given the mean earth radius R ME = 6 371 009 m and t MSL = 288.15 K in equation (8), the nominal calibrated airspeed profile was obtained via equation (10), as shown in Fig. 16.…”

“…The trajectory predictions are computed as a function of the aircraft's motion and the inferred intention. Konyak [10] used the Target Generation Facility (TGF) trajectory predictor and the TGF simulator to demonstrate that Aircraft Intent Description Language (AIDL) can be used to interchange aircraft intent information with a trajectory predictor and the predicted and simulated trajectories are compatible. Some researchers have also tried to predict 4D trajectories using historical flight data.…”

Wind Field Estimation and Its Utilization in Trajectory Prediction

“…58 Intent information is one of the important factors to improve accuracy of trajectory prediction. Several studies in 58,59,60,61,62,63 show that intent information sharing either via existing data-link (Flight Management System (FMS)) or future technology data-link (Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B)) among aircraft or between aircraft and ground-based trajectory prediction system, results in greatly improved the accuracy of the predicted trajectory. Ref.…”