Automated Traffic Control for Smart Landing Facilities

The Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) is a partnership between the FAA, the NASA, US aviation companies, universities and state and local aviation officials. The purpose of SATS is to develop a system to handle future increase in Air Traffic, reduce time-travel, develop automation in Air Traffic Control (ATC) and make better use of small aircraft and underused airports. The Smart Landing Facility (SLF) is an important part of the program. The SLF is a small airport upgraded with equipment to support SATS aircraft. Among the SLF equipment, SATS needs new detection equipment, and eventually automation. This thesis investigates different techniques to avoid data collision in aircraft radar responses, and to reduce delays between landings and take offs. First, the paper shows how and when the radar receiver can separate two overlapped radar responses. Second, to avoid transponders responses overlapping, requirements in t erms of aircraft safety distance are computed, different conflicts in air traffic around the SLF are examined and a solution is proposed for each case. And finally, the thesis investigates how far SATS can go in developing an automatic ATC system and what the role of future human operator will be in ATC. iii Acknowledgments I would like to begin by thanking my advisor and committee chairman, Dr. family and friends for their support during my thesis and more generally during my work time at Virginia Tech. Figure 3-2 Measured transponder reply freque ncy distribution (a) air-carrier aircraft (b) general aviation aircraft (Stevens). Figure 3-6 PLL output for a single sinusoid at the input. VCO at the wrong frequency (VCO initial frequency 33Mhz is 10% higher than the received signal frequency equal to 30MHz). ix Figure 3-10 PLL output for two overlapping sinusoids with different frequencies (First Signal with a frequency of 30MHz, starting at t=0, second signal with a frequency of 33MHz, starting at t=2ms). Figure 3-11 Block diagram of the demodulator for a single (not overlapped) transponder response. After frequency and phase detection, the received signal is multiplied with a sine wave corresponding to the same frequency