Formal Verification of Safety Buffers for State-based Conflict Detection and Resolution

There are always errors when measuring position and velocity of moving objects such as aircraft. Therefore, the information provided by global positioning systems is never totally exact. This paper studies the effects of these errors in the actual separation of aircraft in the context of statebased conflict detection and resolution. Assuming that the state information is uncertain but that bounds on the errors are known, this paper provides analytical definitions of safety buffers and sufficient conditions under which these buffers guarantee that actual conflicts are detected and solved. The results are presented as theorems, which were formally proven using a mechanical theorem prover.