A model approach for surveillance systems

Historically air traffic procedures have been developed based around the performance of existing radar surveillance systems. Now new surveillance systems have to be designed and installed to meet specific operational requirements and to enable new procedures. And today’s air navigation service providers are under increasing regulatory pressure to actively demonstrate safety and cost-efficiency.

This means that infrastructure planning and procurement demands a much more rigorous, multidisciplinary approach than has been traditionally employed in the past.

An important part of the planning process involves ensuring that the surveillance system is safe by design, but is not over-engineered (thereby increasing costs unnecessarily). Safety assessments are carried out to identify system performance requirements considering both “success” (i.e. normal operation) and “failure” cases (i.e. abnormal events) and are used to proactively control risk and costs during the planning process. Safety assessments are even more critical and challenging for new types of surveillance systems, such as ADS-B and WAM, where there is less experience of their performance and behaviour.

This is where software tools can help. They can model and assess the theoretical performance of the planned surveillance infrastructure, particularly for new types of systems. They can offer a powerful and flexible means of validating that the overall design of the system is both safe and cost-effective, again helping to reduce risk.

It is also critical to involve end users (i.e. air traffic controllers) in the planning process as early as possible. This enables you to capture a more accurate picture of the operational requirements and helps them to understand how the planned surveillance infrastructure will meet their needs. Many projects fall down because end users and system developers are unable to ‘speak the same language’. A multidisciplinary team will be better able to capture requirements and communicate results – ultimately improving project success rates.

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Tools-based consultancy in action

CAPT (short for Coverage Analysis and Planning Tool) was developed by Helios on behalf of EUROCONTROL. It is used by ANSPs to plan a cost-effective surveillance infrastructure required to maintain safe separation between aircraft. Critical elements that need to be considered include: the locations of specific surveillance sensors; how the surveillance coverage of each sensor is limited by its performance and the surrounding terrain; and the impact of interference sources. CAPT users can analyse these elements with a combination of surveillance technologies. They are also able to look at today's equipment, such as radar, and consider new technologies, such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) and Wide Area Multilateration (WAM).