At towered airports, air traffic controllers use an “out-the-window” view for situation awareness of the entire airport environment and for ensuring safe operation on and around airport runways. A controller's view of the runways can be limited by a number of factors, including weather conditions, obstructions, and night operations, making some aircraft movements difficult to detect especially in the absence of surface surveillance systems. In remote tower concepts, the same factors can impact the controller's airport view via cameras. While surface surveillance systems, when available, are designed to supplement the controller's visual surveillance, existing systems do not provide sufficient precision to identify the location of the aircraft nose or tail relative to runway entry and exit points, as designated by hold lines. These limitations can negatively impact the controller's situation awareness and can cause controllers to clear aircraft onto the runway when the runway is occupied, resulting in an operational error. The MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation Systems Development (MITRE) conceived of, developed, and tested an airport runway hold line surveillance (HLS) capability that automatically monitors safety critical runway hold lines for aircraft crossings. The capability is envisioned to provide additional surveillance that improves safety but can also positively impact airport efficiency and runway capacity as controllers will no longer have to wait for aircrews to indicate that they are clear of the runway via radio before clearing the next operational use of the runway MITRE CAASD evaluated short-range surveillance sensor technologies and selected a commercially-available automotive radar sensor, then developed and tested a proof-of-concept prototype of the HLS concept. MITRE set up the HLS prototype at Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD) for data collection and analyzed the system's performance. The results of the analysis, measured in terms of positional accuracy, indicate that the concept of detecting aircraft position relative to the hold line using this type of sensor and automation is feasible and could enhance safety in both remote tower and conventional tower environments.
Localized radar-based hold line surveillance at runways
01.09.2017
559188 byte
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Elektronische Ressource
Englisch
New radar system makes runways safer
Emerald Group Publishing | 2004
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