An overview of airborne time-spacing research in the JADE program

The Aircraft Surveillance Applications System (ASAS), what used to be called Airborne Separation Assistance System, is seen as a promising option in future Air Traffic Management (ATM) for increasing capacity and operational effectiveness, and improving safety while reducing fuel consumption. One of the interesting ASAS applications is to achieve desired time intervals between arrival aircraft at the runway threshold. This recent concept combines 4 Dimensional (4D) trajectory management and ASAS operation, which we call ASAS based Interval Management (IM). This paper provides an overview of research program on this airborne time-spacing for arrival air traffic, referred to as the “Joint Airborne time-spacing Design Evaluation (JADE)” program, funded by Japan Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transportation and Tourism. JADE aims to analyze nominal and non-nominal behaviors of many aircraft conducting the airborne timespacing within an airborne time-spacing design which is globally applicable. The JADE program covers three research streams: “SPacing time Intervals of arrival aircraft Conducting ASAS interval management (SPICA)”, “Analysis of Dynamics And MAthematics of String stability (ADAMAS)”, and “Traffic Organization and Perturbation AnalyZer Interval Management (TOPAZ-IM)”. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of these research streams. CATEGORIES AND SUBJECT DESCRIPTORS J.2 [Physical Sciences and Engineering]: Aerospace.