The escalating number of accidents and incidents on surface movements is becoming one of the major airport safety concerns. Furthermore major airports are becoming, or continue to be, capacity constrained, resulting in significant delays, causing frustration and difficulties for both passengers and aircraft operators. In crisis situation, for instance due to adverse meteo, the flow management of passengers becomes chaotic leading to potentially hazardous situations.
Identified solutions aim at providing accurate positioning and surveillance systems, guidance and communication capabilities in the vehicles The objective of AIRNET project is to address the transportation flows in the different airport areas, to define and demonstrate innovative location-based and communication-based services to enhance users safety.
The proposed AIRNET services can organized in three main categories:
AIRNET platform will enable the elaboration of airport situation by real-time acquisition of aircraft and vehicles position through a set of wireless networks. The performances and the reliability of the wireless communication network is a key driver to the “end-to-end” quality of service and will be extensively validated at Toulouse and Porto Airports.
Keywords : Safety Technology, Air Transport Technology, Wireless Systems
The AIRNET main goal may be decomposed following the six key criteria used by the Commission:
AIRNET addresses the airport safety through the management of the ground traffic with technological platform dedicated to the management of airport services vehicles. AIRNET is oriented towards the needs of medium and small airports for which the costs of current existing solutions is not adapted.
AIRNET has also the aim to contribute to the problem of airport congestion, due to adverse weather for instance, and to prevent catastrophic safety or cost-related consequences by supporting critical decision process through automated services.
Potential impactAs air traffic grows steadily, airport congestion becomes an increasing problem and already a limiting factor at several European airports. This situation concerns the international hubs in Europe but is expected to become more widespread all over the ECAC area and future traffic distribution patterns are likely to generate congestion at airports that currently do not experience any capacity problems.
Current technical solutions developed for large airports rely on expensive equipment (ground infrastructure) and specific aeronautical standards. Medium to small airport represent a substantial market for alternative solutions dedicated to airport vehicle management.
AIRNET proposes a low-cost but effective approach by the use of GPS and EGNOS space technology for the positioning of vehicles (light ground infrastructure).
In addition the development of low-cost platform that integrate components either derived from aeronautical or taking benefit of wireless technologies developed at large scale will allow to introduce added-value services dedicated to situation awareness and congestion control. Such services have potentially a great impact on the safety of operations and airport competitiveness.
Scientific and Technological ExcellenceAIRNET aims at developing an airport platform that integrate GPS / EGNOS technologies together with wireless communication solutions in order to provide positioning and identification of airport vehicles to ATC Controller, Airport Operators and other actors that are key decision maker in airport resource usage.
In addition AIRNET platform provide to vehicle drivers safety related information (conflict with aircraft or with airport environment), navigation information as well as key information for the management of vehicles in crisis situation.
AIRNET uses proven technologies to achieve a first version of the platform that will be extensively demonstrated in real conditions at Porto airport and the platform is open to future improvements in the domain of navigation (GALILEO services) or communication (wide-band wireless communication).
Quality of the ConsortiumTo meet its objectives, AIRNET's team has been built around ANA - Aeroportos de Portugal, the Portuguese Airport Service Provider, which will provide key experts to support the definition and development of AIRNET's platform and prepare its exploitation.
A research organisation INOV (Portugal) and four specialised SMEs, M3 SYSTEMS (France), CNS AB (Sweden), INTUILAB (France) and ALITEC (France) will contribute to AIRNET development by providing complementary skills to support the development of the platform:
AIRNET project is coordinated by M3 Systems that has established the appropriate framework to ensure that all project related tasks are performed successfully and according to established contractual and technical requirements.
Such framework is composed of:
Several key factors for the success of innovative safety-related applications in air transportation have been analysed by AIRNET's team and the following resource issues have been addressed:
State of the art
From the ground surface movements viewpoint an airport layout can be broken down into following segments:
A schematic representation of manoeuvring / apron area is depicted in Figure 1:
Figure 1 - Airport Schematic Layout
As illustrated in Figure 2 below, the different airport areas are inter-dependent and involve several types of stakeholders.
Figure 2 - Airport Areas Inter-dependence
Today the management of the different airport segments is performed independently and stakeholders involved in the decision-making process have a limited knowledge of the overall situation. In particular there is no integrated management of the vehicle movements at airport level.
This lack of coordination, in crisis situation (bad meteorological conditions, traffic overload,…), may lead to severe disfunctionments of the airport. Furthermore existing surveillance system dedicated to the manoeuvring area are using procedures primarily based on the "see and be seen" principle to maintain separation between aircraft and/or vehicles. These systems have demonstrated their weaknesses (in particular in low visibility conditions) and the runway incursion risk has become one of the major issue in the safety of air transport.
Today it is well recognized that there is a need for new systems (A-SMGCS : Advanced Surfaced Movement Guidance and Control System) to satisfy the airports demand.
To date several projects have been initiated (or are being initiated), both by the European Commission and by EUROCONTROL. In general these projects address independently two major improvement areas:
Management of ground surface movements by means of “multi-sensor” systems (radar, GPS/EGNOS, ADS-B,…) to improve airport surveillance ( A-SMGCS : Advanced Surface Ground ) in the manoeuvring area
They all require technological breakthroughs for location and surveillance, communication and guidance, together with the development of new automated systems.
AIRNET Project objectives
The safety of vehicles in airport area and the efficiency of their movements are more and more seen as major issues by airport operators as the air traffic growth implies an increase of the number of vehicles that provide services to aircraft on stand / gate or parking.
One key innovation proposed by the AIRNET project to develop a step further the integration of airport safety and efficiency improvements for ground surface movements with a particular emphasis on airport vehicles.
This will be achieved through the following high-level objectives:
Such high-level objectives have been analysed and decomposed by AIRNET partners into technical objectives associated with means to realise them and to measure progress and success.
| High-Level Objective | Technical Objectives | Realised by |
| Prevent airport ground movement safety
hazards due to vehicles by means of an automated control tool
capable of: - Detecting runway incursions - Providing alarms indications both to controller and to vehicle driver |
Identify all runway incursion scenario for a given airport configuration | Expert assessment for OPORTO and TOULOUSE airport cases |
| Define an automated control algorithm allowing to detect runway incursion scenario and to generate alarms to controllers and drivers | Algorithm specification and exhaustive analysis of the software implementing the algorithm. | |
| Define a target architecture and assess algorithm capability to detect “all runway incursion cases“ and to provide alarms compatible with airport operational procedure | Oporto airport implementation and trials | |
| Prevent airport congestion in crisis
situation (air traffic control disruption, major meteorological
events,...) by means of a decision making tool allowing to: - Monitor the vehicles resources utilisation - Manage the vehicle resources allocations according to flight schedule modifications and to meteorological condition changes |
Establish crisis situation scenarion and the relation between aircraft movements and airport vehicle movements | Expert analysis and use of the Oporto platform to acquire information on vehicle movements |
| Specify the principles to perform decision making for the vehicle in crisis situation ( flight delays and adverse meteorological conditions) | Implement a surface movement data processing tool to present the vehicle situation and to manage the vehicle resources allocations | |
| Assess the capability to manage vehicles according changes in flight schedules and in weather conditions | Use the Oporto AIRNET platform to manage vehicles according to specific “crisis scenario” and assess vehicle movement with respect to planning established by decision making tool |
Table 1 - AIRNET Project Objectives
TThe safety and efficiency objectives of AIRNET project require as a first step to monitor all vehicles in apron and manoeuvring area. The stakeholders of airport vehicles are numerous (ATC, Airport Operator, Airlines, Handling agent) and it's in fact a “shared situation awareness” at airport level that needs to be provided, as illustrated in Figure 3 here below.
Figure 3/b> - AIRNET : Towards a shared situation awareness
In practice the AIRNET's project will allow to experiment an extended set of location and communication based services at Porto Airport and to perform a comparative and feasibility analysis for the implementation of the same safety and efficiency platform at Toulouse airport.
AIRNET services
This section describes the AIRNET services and their link to the introduction of A-SMGCS (Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System) in Europe.
The AIRNET services will focus on the safety and efficiency of ground movements in the different airport areas. The proposed services are classified into following main classes:
Relationship between AIRNET and A-SMGCS
Eurocontrol ATM strategy for 2000+ states that «making full use of the available capacity at the busier airports will become an increasingly important factor in the future». However, It is recognised that the current ‘SMGCS’ (Surface Movement Guidance and Control System), which is based upon the principle of "see and be seen" is not capable of delivering the required capacity (particularly on complex airports, under conditions of low visibility and at night) and that there is a need for an Advanced SMGCS (A-SMGCS).
Eurocontrol A-SMGCS project has determined the requirements for the two first essential services for A-SMCS in European airports in the 2005 - 2010 horizon:
Surveillance: provides controllers, pilots and vehicle drivers with the traffic situation on the movement area;
Alerting: detection and prevention of conflicts and collisions with aircraft.
Other services such as Planning or Guidance are being developped in several ATM organisations world-wide but no mature requirements have yet been proposed to Aviation community.
AAIRNET will enable the implementation of the Surveillance and Alerting A-SMGCS services by providing a set of specific services dedicated to the safety and management of the airport vehicles. This is illustrated by the Figure 4.
Figure 4/b> - AIRNET and A-SMGCS Relationships
The first implementations of A-SMGCS systems in Europe are rather oriented towards the control of aircraft operations and relies subsequently on aeronautical equipment for communications.
AIRNET offers a natural complement to this approach by :
Again AIRNET will contribute to such extension by :
AIRNET System and Key enablers
In order to achieve the proposed services, the following key enablers have been identified:
Mobiles positioning using satellite navigation capabilities (GPS and European augmentation EGNOS) so that location of all airport actors is published with a good level of accuracy and integrity.
Data exchange between mobiles and between mobiles and centralised monitoring systems (built on top of databases) through a set of airport wireless communication networks.
The use of wireless communication technologies to build mobile communication networks (ground/mobile & mobile/mobile) is a major issues for AIRNET project. These communication technologies will need to provide the quality of service which is required by the airport operations:
The AIRNET system architecture is illustrated in Figure 5 and is composed by following components:
The vehicle transponder which includes the position sensor (GPS and EGNOS augmentation), the interface to AIRNET wireless networks the vehicle driver HMI and the application software which provides the services to the driver.
The wireless networks which allow to cover both the APRON area and the Manoeuvring area.
TThe vehicle control center composed by a communication server, a controller HMI, and a processing facility to elaborate the overall situation and the services to the ground controller.
Figure 5/b> - AIRNET System Architecture
Project Success Criteria
The main success criteria for AIRNET project will be the approval of the demonstration platform at Oporto airport by ANA - Aeroportos de Portugal and the follow up of technical activity leading to the certification and operational implementation.
The approval will be determined by a set of key performance indicators (KPI) that quantify the safety - efficiency - cost benefits that are provided by AIRNET.
| Category | KPI | Notes |
| SAFETY | Occurrence rate or probability of accidents and incidents during airport surface movements. | The use of AIRNET results in an increase of accuracy in operational procedure completion and thus could be considered as a safety benefit. The impacts of the AIRNET procedures on safety aspects will be studied by considering the «control tower» operating procedures and the « vehicle» environment when assessing the benefits from the ATC and vehicle driver viewpoints. |
| CAPACITY / EFFICIENCY | Airport capacity in low visibility conditions or in case of congestion | Airport capacity may be largely impacted in case of low visibility conditions or due to congestion. By improving the coordination of vehicle movements in such conditions, AIRNET may allow the reduction of aircraft delays on the ground and potentially may contribute to the increase of the number of arrivals and departures per hour. |
| COSTS | Delay minutes for aircraft on the ground | Only unplanned delay arising from congestion and tactical failures will be considered. AIRNET may contribute to the reduction of such delays by providing a situational awareness to handling agents and vehicle drivers. |
Table 2 - AIRNET Performance Indicators
Other contribution of AIRNET will be also be considered:
References for success measurement
In order to measure the potential benefits of AIRNET, a set of key performance indicators for safety - airport capacity - cost benefits will be defined and "calibrated" with actual figures that are published by EUROCONTROL.
As part of the technical work in the project a Cost-Benefit analysis will be carried out in order to measure the cost savings or gains that are associated with AIRNET benefits and to compare with the cost to purchase the system.
Key factors contributing to Project Achievement
Several key factors contributing to the success of innovative safety-related application development in air transportation have been analysed by AIRNET team and are presented here below:
ANA - Aeroportos de Portugal is involved all through the project, in RTD activities to support technological experts in understanding safety and business needs, supervising the platform prototype and preparing platform operations at OPorto.
The AIRNET platform will be demonstrated at Oporto airport in a real operational context, its services will be widely exposed to the Airport Stakeholders.
ANA is also considering the possibility to maintain AIRNET in operations at Oporto if it proves to complain with all the airport requirements.
A significant effort from M3 SYSTEMS, ANA and INOV is reserved for demonstration and external evaluation of the platform.
The AIRNET developments are initially prepared by a significant effort allocated to definition and specification that involves the coordinator (M3 SYSTEMS) and the future platform operator (ANA).
The aim is to derive precise platform requirement definitions decoupling telecommunication, on-board equipment, software, Human-Man interface issues to be further elaborated by specialised companies.
The critical technological enablers for AIRNET are : innovative positioning services, wireless telecommunications, on-board equipment, Human - Machine interface and safety critical software applications.
Significant effort and financial resource have been reserved for the development and initial validation of such enablers.
Progress will be measured all through the project. The progress will be measured taking into account the following items
AA progress report will be prepared for the quaterly progress meetings and presented to the Steering Committee.
Contribution to standards
The future standards for air transport communications (2020 horizon) are still under investigation and it is expected that they will benefit from the progress in wireless communication technologies.
In the AIRNET project the aeronautical communication standards which are foreseen on the short term will be assessed together with the new wireless technologies. This will allow to provide initial contribution to the definition of future aeronautical standards, e.g. for A-SMGCS and the Airport Collaboration Decision Making (CDM), and to “sense” the potential of commercial technologies for this area of application.
The enhancement of the airports capability, and the improvement of safety in low visibility operations are well influenced by those projects of Eurocontrol.
The AIRNET will be developed taking in consideration the recommendations and programs issued by European Commission and Eurocontrol in the scope of A-SMGCS and Airport CDM projects.
Contribution to policy developments
In order to cope with the increasing traffic and to enable airports to make the best use of possible capacity set up by the aerodrome infrastructure, current ATC Controllers and Airport Operators working practices have to evolve.
Current procedures are based primarily on the "see and be seen" principle to maintain separation between aircraft and/or vehicles on airport area. In adverse meteorological conditions, Low Visual Procedures (LVP) are implemented in airports. Those procedures curtail the airport capacity and impede apron activities especially when airports are not equipped to track ground mobiles.
There are examples of efficient practices applied locally but not standardised in Europe for the management of vehicles and aircraft traffic in the apron area (not under the exclusive responsibility of ATC) especially in low visibility conditions.
The application of new and emerging technologies together with adequate procedures have the potential to contribute to airports for maintaining their optimal throughput in all weather conditions.
In addition the definition of appropriate measures to be taken to prevent congestion, supported by automated services for the management of airport vehicles will contribute to increase the safety level of airport operations and will contribute to current airport standard procedures being developed in European Airspace.
Risk assessment and related communication strategy
AIRNET team has identified the following risks for the project and the related communication actions that need to be taken:
Socio-Economic Benefits of the Project
According to the forecasts put forward by Eurocontrol (ATM Strategy for 2000+), air traffic could raise more than 50% by the year 2015. In particular, the ATC objectives in the ATM strategy for 2000+ documents state «making full use of the available capacity at the busier airports will become an increasingly important factor in the future». But the growing demand for air traffic capacity must be met without compromising the current level of safety and, where possible safety improvements shall be introduced.
Sharing situational awareness is the primary contributing factor to allow improved co-ordination process between airport decision-makers. As traffic grows and environmental constraints (noise, emission, airport extend) become more and more severe, co-ordination between Airport actors is essential to make the best use of available resource (CDM).
The AIRNET project will bring a significant contribution to the sustainable growth of airports in Europe. The main safety benefits arising from AIRNET is the reduced likelihood of incursion on to runways and restricted areas, and improved detection of potential conflicts. Such improvement results in an increased throughput in low visibility conditions (as defined by ICAO).Other benefits are improved ATCO situational awareness, better ATCO anticipation, delay reduction, and the avoidance of diversions and cancellations.
AIRNET aims at developing a system allowing the different decision-makers of transport means at airports to optimise the traffic in real-time and increasing safety/capacity. This is important to adapt quickly to unexpected events such as delays of aircraft and to efficiently manage crisis situations for instance when the air traffic is stopped due to adverse meteorological conditions (snow, fog…). It will mainly provide benefits to both the transport managers and the passengers. The share of information will permit the transport managers to make a better use of their resources and so to save money. The passengers will benefit of this optimisation through a decrease of waiting at the connection between two transport modes.
In cases of major crisis at the public transportation system in conjunction with the airport system should support emergency services to passengers reducing overall risk and traffic congestion.
The main societal and economic challenges addressed are :
Progress in technology
The AIRNET project will contribute to the development of mobile, wireless communication infrastructures as well as software and computing technologies that are necessary to provide enhanced safety services to the airport stakeholders.
AIRNET requires progress in three main technology building blocks:
AIRNET's team offers a balanced, independent source of expertise to carry out the project aiming at building a platform dedicated to airport safety and congestion monitoring.
Two key factors have been identified for the success of the project:
To meet such success criteria, AIRNET's team has been built around ANA, the Portuguese Airport Service Provider, which will provide key experts to support the definition and development of AIRNET's platform and prepare its exploitation.
A research organisation and four specialised SMEs will contribute to AIRNET development by providing their key expertise to support the development of AIRNET platform: complex system engineering, satellite navigation technology, wireless telecommunications applied to airport environment and to vehicles, mission-critical software development and validation, advanced Human-Man Interface (HMI) design.
Such approach takes benefit of partners complementarities for technological development and operations of AIRNET platform.
Overall view of Partners and Complementarities
The AIRNET participants, their respective role are the following:
Participant 1 - M3 SYSTEMS, Coordinator of AIRNET, is a SME that has built a recognised expertise in the specification and development of safety critical systems for airport operations, in particular for the surveillance of airport vehicles.
M3 SYSTEMS will contribute to AIRNET by providing an expert view of the safety issues associated to aircraft or vehicles movement in the proximity of runways (prevention of runway incursions) as well as for the development of new services taking benefit of satellite navigation, requiring high performances of accuracy and integrity.
M3 SYSTEMS is the leader of WP1, that includes definition of AIRNET concept, specification and preparation of a cost/benefit analysis for the platform and that will drive the work of AIRNET partners.
M3 SYSTEMS is the leader of WP2 for the development of runway safety components. It will also take the lead of WP 4.1 for demonstrations at Toulouse airport and finally in WP 5.2 for the synthesis of project results.
Participant 2 - ANA SA is a large Portuguese company in charge of the operations and the development of the main Portuguese airports.
AIRNET will benefit from ANA’s know-how on airport management (different airport sizes, different traffic patterns and seasonality), and the knowledge on ATC and Airport projects and functionalities.
ANA will be involved in all specification activities to ensure its compliance with safety and airport business needs as well as the compliance with aeronautical standards and is the Leader of WP4 for the operation of platform prototypes at Toulouse and Porto Airports and for the demonstration and setting to work, in normal operational conditions, of AIRNET.
ANA is key partner for the future exploitation of AIRNET platform at Porto Airport and therefore will take the lead of WP 5.2 for the dissemination of project results towards European Airport Stakeholders.
Participant 3 - INOV is a Portuguese SME specialised in telecommunications applied to airport operations. INOV will provide its expertise for the development of wireless solutions for airport vehicles with the aim of preventing congestion in apron area (parking).
INOV will take the lead of WP3 for development congestion and control components and the network specification, the design and implementation of the communications platform, the navigational control system for ground vehicles, and the spatial decision support system for a disaster contingency planning system, i.e. WP3.2, 3.3 and 3.4.
In addition during the validation phase, INOV will contribute to the system integration and assessment.
Participant 4 - CNS is a Swedish SME specialised in the design of VHF data link equipment for Civil Aviation or Sea / Land Transportation domains. CNS will contribute to WP2 by providing key expertise and components for the on-board equipment (transponder VDL-4), which ensures the reception and transmission of vehicle position or airport situation information that enables the runway safety service.
Participant 5 – INTUILAB is a French SME specialised in HMI design in particular for Air Traffic Management systems. INTUILAB will take the responsibility of HMI development in the context of runway safety applications (ground and on-board systems).
Participant 6 – ALITEC is a French SME specialised in the development and validation of safety-critical software in particular for aeronautics and automotive domains. ALITEC will contribute to WP2 by performing a formal validation of the runway safety components.
Summary
The escalating number of accidents and incidents on surface movements is becoming one of the major airport safety concerns. Furthermore major airports are becoming, or continue to be, capacity constrained, resulting in significant delays, causing frustration and difficulties for both passengers and aircraft operators. In crisis situation, for instance due to adverse meteo, the flow management of passengers becomes chaotic leading to potentially hazardous situations.
Identified solutions aim at providing accurate positioning and surveillance systems, guidance and communication capabilities in the vehicles.
The objective of AIRNET project is to address the transportation flows in the different airport areas, to define and demonstrate innovative location-based and communication-based services to enhance users safety.
The proposed AIRNET services can be organized in three main categories:
AIRNET platform will enable the elaboration of airport situation by real-time acquisition of aircraft and vehicles position through a set of wireless networks. The performances and the reliability of the wireless communication network is a key driver to the “end-to-end” quality of service and will be extensively validated at Toulouse and Porto Airports.
The proposed set of AIRNET services implies:
Consequently, the interaction between the users (controllers and vehicle drivers) and the information infrastructure which allows to elaborate the situation and has to be addressed in an integrated way to ensure consistency and adequate quality of service.
The AIRNET project is perfectly in line with the IST strategic objective 2.3.1.10 “eSafety for Road and Air Transport” which is defined as follow:
In the table here below the AIRNET project is positioned with respect to IST objectives.
|
Focus of the IST objective 2.3.1.10 |
AIRNET project |
|
Secure communications and advanced positioning and mapping technologies and their integration for supporting the provision of location based value added services. |
AIRNET services are location based services to the airport stakeholders. Integration is made between the different airport segments |
|
Research on advanced communication systems |
Innovative network technologies and positioning |
|
Highly dependable software & distributed intelligent agents, |
The alert & monitoring function in the vehicle and in the ground control centre |
|
Interfaces to integrate on-board safety systems that assist the driver in road vehicle control; advanced airborne collision avoidance systems for aircraft. |
Driver HMI has to allow operational interface and management of critical situations when alarm is generated (collision risk) |
|
Vehicle and information infrastructure management systems with emphasis on safety and efficiency. |
Definition of AIRNET services is focused on safety and efficiency |
Table 3 - AIRNET and IST objectives
The AIRNET project will benefit from the results of non European Commission projects. In particular, the company M3 Systems has already conducted the DELTA project (2001/2002) in Toulouse Blagnac (Financed by French Ministry of Research) which has demonstrated the benefits of a new location based service to support the surveillance of manoeuvring area vehicles. This service requires that cooperative vehicles are equipped with a dedicated transponder to transmit the vehicle position and identity. It provides a better situation awareness to the controller by displaying the airport mobiles situation (including aircraft).
The DELTA experimentation has demonstrated the need for controller to get a complement to the visual control in particular for remote areas or in bad visibility conditions. Furthermore it demonstrated the importance of vehicle identification which can only be obtained by using a transponder on the vehicle (surface radar does not allow this identification capability). In complement to DELTA project, M3 Systems is currently involved in EUROCONTROL studies to define the future operational concept for improving the management of airport ground surface movements.
The coordination with other EU projects will be maintained and in particular with IP projects in the A-SMGCS domain. Working relations have already been established with AIRBUS, NLR and DLR to allow coordination in these domains.
The AIRNET project team is composed by an airport operator (ANA), research laboratory (INOV) and SMEs : M3 Systems, INTUILAB, ALITEC and a major equipment manufacturer CNS. Therefore the combination of expertise also correspond to the type of collaboration demanded by IST.
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