The Future of Air Traffic Control Human Operators and Automation (1998) / Chapter Skim
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3 Surveillance and Communication
3 Surveillance and Communication
Pages 85-110
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From page 85... ...
and weather data. Aircraft situation data are acquired primarily through radar systems, although global positioning system/automatic dependent surveillance applications are under consideration by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
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From page 86... ...
Radar surveillance is not provided for oceanic air traffic control. Within the national airspace system, radar is considered a service delivered to controllers by a radar system consisting of the radar equipment itself, radar processing hardware and software, the display devices used to present the resulting data, and the interfaces among the system elements.
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From page 87... ...
TRACONs are not serviced by an enhanced direct access radar channel backup; instead, TRACONs can be supplied, if necessary, by radar data from a connected en route HOST. Under such circumstances, the TRACON relies on the less accurate air route surveillance radar, and controllers must adjust their separations accordingly.
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From page 88... ...
Concerned by the prospect that its limited capacity (e.g., memory and processing speed) will not be able to withstand projected increases in air traffic and will not be able to support functional enhancements aimed at increasing the throughput of the air traffic control system, the FAA has initiated the development of the standard terminal automation replacement system (STARS)
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From page 89... ...
In addition, it is standard practice for airway facilities radar specialists to enter numerical corrections into specially designed processing routines, to achieve registration through software. Although processing filters and corrections can significantly compensate for clutter and misregistration, the radar data processing systems are ultimately limited by the accuracies achievable by the radar technology and these limited accuracies affect the separation standards imposed by air traffic controllers.
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From page 90... ...
There are obvious applications in air traffic control that could benefit from the use of satellite navigation. However, many complex issues must be considered before GPS can be adopted as an air traffic control standard.
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From page 91... ...
Enhanced oceanic traffic management is also possible with the use of GPS. Besides enhancing the ground control aspect of air traffic control, GPS can also shift traffic management into the hands of the pilots, if this is desirable.
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From page 92... ...
The nominal accuracy of the standard positioning service without selective availability is 2030 meters; selective availability degrades this to 100 meters. When this restriction is removed and the second civil frequency is implemented, an accuracy of 56 meters could be obtained (Aviation Week and Space Technology, 1997~.
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From page 93... ...
Some of these wormholes cover hundreds of square miles (Aviation Week and Space Technology, 1995a)
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From page 94... ...
Defense Research Agency tests found similar results; a 1-watt jammer was able to interfere out to 16 nautical miles (Aviation Week and Space Technology, 1995c)
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From page 95... ...
Special consideration must be taken in addressing the issue of using GPS in air traffic control and air traffic management applications. Utilizing the system necessitates the design concept of automatic dependent surveillance (ADS)
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From page 96... ...
Integrating the automatic dependent surveillance system with the current system may increase air traffic control operational cost and complexity, but it potentially could also increase the integrity, reliability, and overall safety of the entire system. The cost of actually implementing an automatic dependent surveillance system would potentially be less if it were to complement instead of replace independent surveillance.
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From page 97... ...
Controllers and flight service specialists, in turn, communicate with pilots to exchange weather information. The current system of weather information distribution for air traffic control is fragmented and does not adequately tailor information for controllers, specialists, and pilots.
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From page 99... ...
En Route Weather Data Controllers and traffic managers in the en route, including oceanic, environment also receive weather reports from pilots (through pilot reports) , from the National Weather Service, and from commercial vendors.
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From page 100... ...
Currently, some weather data that pilots receive from other pilots and from airline dispatchers is often better than that which can be provided through the air traffic control weather data systems. Therefore, through pilot reports, pilots are a critical source of weather information for controllers.
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From page 101... ...
First, as we noted earlier in this chapter, ADS-B can potentially serve air traffic control with precise position information, thereby eventually replacing the slower, less accurate, and more expensive secondary surveillance radar. This will depend, of course, on all participating aircraft being ADS-B-equipped, a requirement that is potentially less expensive than a mode S transponder and 1090 mHz receiver.
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From page 102... ...
, although the system is not yet implemented in operational flight. ACARS is a digital data link system currently in use, but it interfaces between aircraft and airline companies concerning company business, unlike the proposed data link system that interfaces with air traffic controllers and addresses issues of flight control.
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From page 103... ...
Many of these guidelines were compiled in a set of human factors recommendations for data link (SAL Aerospace Recommended Practice, 1994~. Furthermore, those studies that have directly compared a data-link-equipped aircraft with a radiotelephone-only aircraft have revealed improvements in various levels of air traffic management efficiency (e.g., increased traffic flow, reduced delays; Federal Aviation Administration 1995a, 1996c)
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From page 104... ...
. Finally, analysis of the total transmission time, which is the time between the initiation of a message by air traffic control and receipt of acknowledgment that the message has been received, suggests that this may be nearly twice as long for a visual-manual data link system (around 20 seconds)
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From page 105... ...
and on the ground (Programme for Harmonised Air Traffic Management Research in Eurocontrol PD1,1996; Nirhjaus,1993~. In each environment, three issues are raised: 1.
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From page 106... ...
With regard to the second workload issue, interference with ongoing tasks, a major concern has been the "head-down time" imposed as pilots read data link information (Gent and Van, 1995; Groce and Boucek, 1987) and, to a lesser extent, the time that the controller must divert gaze away from the plan view display (Programme for Harmonised Air Traffic Management Research in Eurocontrol PDT, 1996~.
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From page 107... ...
This issue has not been examined. Furthermore, as yet, no specific examination of keystroke errors in data link usage has been carried out to compare, for example, their frequency relative to the frequency of communication errors with an radiotelephone system (Cardosi, 1993~.
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From page 108... ...
Furthermore, unless data link messages are redundantly presented via voice synthesis, the pilot flying will be less aware of potentially important up-linked information that would have been shared under a radiotelephone system. On the ground, the FAA simulations have revealed the positive benefits of data link, in terms of load sharing and the flexibility of distribution of responsibilities, when traffic load becomes quite high (Federal Aviation Administration 1996c; Talotta et al., 1992a, 1992b)
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From page 109... ...
But within the data link system, various higher levels of automation have been proposed. Various forms of computer-based automation can assist in message composition, hence reducing workload (Kerns, 1994; Programme for Harmonised Air Traffic Management Research in Eurocontrol PDT, 1996~.
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From page 110... ...
Given possibilities envisioned by the different levels of gating, it is feasible that a system could be designed that allows alternative gating modes. Such a system will invite confusion: a pilot, for example, may assume that a message was automatically loaded into the flight management system (high automation, low gating)
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