Autonomous System for Air Traffic Control in Terminal Airspace

Erzberger, Heinz; Chu, Yung-Cheng; Nikoleris, Tasos; Paielli, Russell A.

doi:10.2514/6.2014-2861

Cited by 31 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(1 reference statement)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is performed by the traffic management advisor, an ATC decision support tool that is installed at all major airports in the United States and designed to manage air traffic outside of the terminal airspace. However, the next generation of air traffic management tools in the U.S.-currently under development-are designed to manage air traffic inside the terminal airspace (Swenson et al 2011;Nikoleris et al 2014). In those systems, aircraft are assigned RTAs at the runway threshold, which are computed when an aircraft enters the terminal airspace of its arrival airport.…”

Section: Model Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Currently in the United States, TBOs are conducted for aircraft arriving at the entry points-or "meter fixes"-of the terminal airspace of major airports. Operations for crossing runway thresholds are still not time based, although research is currently underway to develop ATC decision support tools that enable them (Swenson et al 2011;Nikoleris et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Effect of Trajectory Prediction and Stochastic Runway Occupancy Times on Aircraft Delays

Nikoleris

Hansen

2016

Transportation Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

T his paper examines aircraft delays when arriving flights have been assigned specific times to land by air traffic control. It shows that the benefit from aircraft meeting their prescribed times of arrival with higher precision is moderated if it is not complemented by accurate predictions of runway occupancy times (ROTs) after touchdown. A single server queueing system is considered, in which the server corresponds to an airport's runway. Landing aircraft are assigned scheduled times of arrival at the runway, which they meet with some stochastic error. The time for an aircraft to clear the runway is included as a random variable in the model. A recursive queueing model is formulated and expressions are derived for the mean and variance of aircraft delays. The analysis then focuses on the effect of unpunctual arrivals on delays and how that is affected by dispersion in aircraft ROTs. A simplified situation, in which model parameters are the same for all aircraft, shows that dispersion in ROTs causes significant losses in throughput efficiency, substantially reducing the benefit of precise trajectory adherence in many cases.

show abstract

Section: Model Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Trajectory Prediction and Stochastic Runway Occupancy Times on Aircraft Delays

Nikoleris

Hansen

2016

Transportation Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The required aircraft minimum separation in TMA, denoted by s min k,g , k, g ∈ F . Since the time-based system is much more convenient for detecting conflict and metering flows, we consider to transfer the distance-based separation to time-based separation Nikoleris et al (2014). The reference velocity used for this computation is based on the average final approach speed of commercial aircraft by aircraft weight category in no wind condition, which is also the minimum speed of aircraft operating in TMA.…”

Section: Constraintsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conflict-free arrival and departure trajectory planning for parallel runway with advanced point-merge system

Liang

Delahaye

Maréchal

2018

Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To cite this version:Man Liang, Daniel Delahaye, Pierre Maréchal. Conflict-free arrival and departure trajectory planning for parallel runway with advanced point-merge system. Transportation research. AbstractIn this paper, an efficient trajectory planning system is proposed to solve the integration of arrivals and departures on parallel runways with a novel route network system. Our first effort is made in designing an advanced Point Merge (PM) route network named Multi-Level Point Merge (ML-PM) to meet the requirements of parallel runway operations. Then, more efforts are paid on finding a complete and efficient framework capable of dynamically modelling the integration of arrival and departure trajectories on parallel runways, modelling the conflict detection and resolution in presence of curved trajectory and radius-to-fix merging process. After that, a suitable mathematical optimization formulation is built up. Receding Horizon Control (RHC) and Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithms are proposed to search the near-optimal solution for the large scale trajectories in routine dense operations. Taking Beijing Capital International Airport (BCIA) as a study case, the experimental results show that our system shows good performances on the management of arrivals and departures. It can automatically solve all the potential conflicts in presence of dense traffic flows. With its unique ML-PM route network, it can realize a shorter flying time and a near-Continuous Descent Approach (CDA) descent for arrival aircraft, an economical climbing for departure aircraft, an easier runway allocation together with trajectory control solutions. It shows a good and dynamic sequencing efficiency in Terminal Manoeuvring Area (TMA). In mixed ML-PM mode, under tested conditions, our proposed system can increase throughput at BCIA around 26%, compared with baseline. The methodology defined here could be easily applied to airports worldwide.

show abstract

“…Trials have been conducted, and more are planned, but the paper does not list any of the results. The paper [4] attempts an autonomous system that performs conflict resolution and arrival scheduling for arrivals and departures at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and the Dallas Love Field Airport. This paper, however, states it was not successful in its attempt to devise an autonomous algorithm.…”

Section: Literature Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Elementary Algorithm for Autonomous Air Terminal Merging and Interval Management

White

2017

AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technologies Conference

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A central element of air traffic management is the safe merging and spacing of aircraft during the terminal area flight phase. This paper derives and examines an algorithm for the merging and interval managing problem for Standard Terminal Arrival Routes. It describes a factor analysis for performance based on the distribution of arrivals, the operating period of the terminal, and the topology of the arrival routes; then presents results from a performance analysis and from a safety analysis for a realistic topology based on typical routes for a runway at Phoenix International Airport. The heart of the safety analysis is a statistical derivation on how to conduct a safety analysis for a local simulation when the safety requirement is given for the entire airspace I. INTRODUCTION This study develops and examines an algorithm for the merging and interval managing problem for Standard Terminal Arrival Routes (STARS). Once the algorithm is derived, there are two parts to this study. The first part consists of a factor analysis for performance that considers the distribution of arrivals, the operating period of the terminal, and the topology of the arrival routes. The second part conducts a performance analysis and a safety analysis for a realistic topology based on the routes for one of the runways at Phoenix International Airport. The overall objective is to increase understanding of air traffic by creating algorithms and models. The merging and interval management of aircraft in a terminal appears to be a topic that can evolve into other areas. Secondary objectives include:  Simulation for part of or all of the national airspace-such simulations can contribute to more efficient and safer routing and operations, and such simulations depend on accurate and efficient models of terminal operations.  Operation of autonomous aircraftautonomous aircraft can perform routine and boring tasks such as monitoring a forest for fires, and they can perform dangerous tasks such as crop dusting. We are more willing to send an autonomous craft instead of a piloted airplane into hazardous conditions. In the near future, we may see the autonomous operation of cargo carriers.  Layout of arrival routesthere may or may not be two different criteria. One is the efficient and safe conduction of autonomous procedures. The other is to ease the burden of an air traffic controller. For air traffic controllers, our conjecture is that easing the burden leads to more efficient and safer operation.  Extension to traffic outside the terminal areain the material below, when an aircraft arrives at the terminal area, the algorithm computes whether or not it can enter the queue. One possibility is the converse of this where the algorithm computes the range of arrival speeds and arrival times that allow it to enter the queue. This can be applied to aircraft in transit. It can possibly be extended to cover the entire flight including takeoff time.

show abstract

Autonomous System for Air Traffic Control in Terminal Airspace

Cited by 31 publications

References 4 publications

Effect of Trajectory Prediction and Stochastic Runway Occupancy Times on Aircraft Delays

Effect of Trajectory Prediction and Stochastic Runway Occupancy Times on Aircraft Delays

Conflict-free arrival and departure trajectory planning for parallel runway with advanced point-merge system

An Elementary Algorithm for Autonomous Air Terminal Merging and Interval Management

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About