Investigations Into Airborne Separation Assurance in a Distributed Simulation Environment

Abstract

With the introduction of Free Flight in dedicated airspace, investigations into collaborative as well as airborne conflict detection and resolution gain increasing importance. For airborne conflict detection and resolution, intended flight paths of surrounding aircraft shall not only be computed through extrapolation of the present aircraft position but shall additionally include current FMS flightplan data from intruding aircraft. Consequently, concerning threat detection and resolution, a specially designed Collision Risk Model was developed, identifying threats with regard to individual navigation performance of the conflicting aircraft. According to ICAO’s RNP concept, threats are consequently defined through preset minimum level of safety adjusted dynamically to current aircraft and environment parameters. The objective of this project is to demonstrate that well adapted resolution advisory algorithms, appropriately displayed on EFIS displays according to a Human Centered Automation Approach, can lead in the light of concepts like EATMS etc. to equally safe but more economic air traffic procedures. In this context, a distributed simulation environment with high en-route traffic scenarios has been set up. At the Scientific Research Facility as part of the A330/A340 Full Flight Simulator, the Generic Flight Management System and its Human Machine Interface were modified in order to allow the processing and presentation of the newly developed functions and procedures.