Friday, April 11, 2008

New air traffic system

New air traffic system.

1 comment:

Alex said...

Does it actually say what it is? I read it twice, and am still not sure what they have in mind. At first they say "essentially G.P.S. for airplanes", which leads you to think it is a replacement for Loran, some form of DGPS system probably.

Then when you read the article it goes on about radar tracking, and how the long range radars have 12 second sweeps, this I remember from my early days programming.

Indeed reading the description of ADB-B it matches a system we worked on with Elf Aquatain and Tampa Bay's port authorities.

A radar system knows where there is an object. It sees objects every 12 seconds, and a tracker can extrapolate where the object may be at the end of the next 12 second sweep. Great, a plane travelling 480 mph has gone 8 miles in a minute, or two miles in a radar sweep, this may include a turn.

When objects are close (rain cloud near aircraft) they may merge. A transponder on the plane can tag the tracked target, so objects can be known. Trackers can get fooled, but generally do a good job.

The proposed system is a combination of vessels reporting their position based on satellite derived location. ATC (air traffic control) now has this more frequent information to build into a plot extracted image of the skies.

There will still be radar, and non-compliant air traffic (flock of geese?, crop duster, the bad guys) will show up on the tracker. This information is also broadcast back to the planes.

Now all the planes share the image that ATC get, can merge this with nose radar images and get a complete image of their immediate future.

Yet Pogue seems to think this is not the interesting or important side of the discussion. He is more focussed on who thinks up acronyms.

It would be nice to know how many operational hours before UPS saw the cost benefit, and at what percentage system adoption will the FAA allow the gaps to be closed?

p.s. Just Googled my old company "Denbridge Digital" and they are still out there! I thought they shut the door years ago...