Special Issue on Social Infrastructure that Guarantees Safety, Security, Fairness, and Efficiency
Laying the Groundwork for the Next Generation of Air Traffic ControlSHOTA Takeshi, YOSHIDA Hiroaki
1. Introduction
NEC has been developing and delivering air traffic control systems to Japan Civil Aviation Bureau for more than half a century. Air traffic control systems have de-veloped in sync with the construction and expansion of hub airports and the increase in air traffic triggered by economic development in Asia. Looking to the future, the volume of air traffic is expected to continue to in-crease due to the emergence of various air mobility op-erations. Already new issues have arisen as the air traf-fic operating environment becomes ever more complex
as air traffic becomes more diverse. To help air traffic control systems advance into the future, it is essential that these issues be solved. In this paper, we look at NEC’s efforts to date in this area, as well as its plans for the future.
NEC has been developing and delivering advanced air traffic control systems that support the civil aviation bu-reau and air carriers in Japan for more than half a century. In the future, as the nations of the world draw ever closer together, the volume of air traffic will grow substantially, bringing with it a demand for more sophisticated and flexible air traffic control systems. This paper discusses some of the issues the aviation industry is facing go-ing forward and explains how NEC’s commitment to focusing on the next generation of air traffic control will help to solve those issues.
air traffic control system, hybrid air-route surveillance sensor processing equipment,
air traffic management system, high-speed transaction, sensing
Keywords
Abstract
Fig. 1 Development and introduction of air traffic control systems. Fig. 2 Image of data linkage between FACE and HARP.
19701973
19781987
19921994
20052015
2019
Commenced operation of flight plan information processing system.
Commenced operation of oceanic air traffic data processing system.
Commenced operation of aeronautical fixed telecommunication automatic exchange and aeronautical data processing system.
Commenced operation of total information display unit (TDU).
Commenced operation of airport flight information system.
Air traffic flow management system
Commenced operation of data link center system.
Commenced operation of flight object administration center (FACE) system.
Commenced operation of oceanic air traffic control processing system.
2018Introduced hybrid air-route surveillance sensor processing equipment (HARP).
AircraftOperator A
Civil Aviation Bureau
Aircraft/Pilots
FACE
HARP
Air traffic controlprocessing system(human-machineinterface)/Controller
Rader WAM Other sensors
Communicationsequipment
Navigation equipment
FODB
Aircraft
Aircraft
Operator B
Operator Z
Flight plan
Air traffic control communications
Accurate location information
Location information
Location information
Location information
Flight plan
Flight plan
Flight plan
Accurate location information
FODB:Flight Object Data BaseWAM:Wide Area MultilaterationHMI:Human Machine Interface
Technologies for Achieving Digital Transformation (DX) of Social Systems: DX of Airports
NEC Technical Journal/Vol.16 No.1/Special Issue on Social Infrastructure that Guarantees Safety, Security, Fairness, and Efficiency58
2. NEC’s Air Traffic Control Systems — The Story So Far
2.1 A history of development and innovation
As globalization forges tighter links between nations and economies, the role of airport and air travel has become ever more important. For more than half a cen-tury, NEC has been developing systems for air traffic
management operations in general, including air traffic control systems (Fig. 1).
2.2 Systems now in operation
Examples of large-scale systems supported by NEC include the flight object administration center (FACE) system which began operations in 2015 and the hybrid
Fig. 3 Overview of FACE1).
Fig. 4 Configurational concept and features of DIOSA/XTP2).
organizations
ICAP
(FADP)
Airlinecompany
Ministry ofDefense
Overseas
information
FACE(Flight Object Administration CEntersystem)FACE implements integrated control of flight plan information (flight number, flight route, etc.) and other information related to operation (flightinformation, weather information, etc.) for air traffic information processing systems, while issuing and receiving information to and from concerned organizations in Japan and overseas.
FACE
Aviation-related
Airline company
Ministry of Defense
Meteorological Agency (ADESS)
Overseas air traffic control organizations
Intra-bureau external system
organization
TAPS: Trajectorized Airport Traffic Data Processing SystemTEPS: Trajectorized En-route Traffic Data Processing SystemTOPS: Trajectorized Oceanic Traffic Data Processing SystemADEX: ATC Data Exchange System (ADEX)ICAP: Integrated Control Advice Processing SystemTEAM: Trajectorized Enhanced Aviation Management
Flight plan informationMeteorological information
Aviation information
Air traffic control center
Area control centers(Fukuoka and Tokyo)
- Central processing of operation information
- Relay processing- System transition
- FO management processing
- Operation informationprocessing at airport
- CNS/ATM-DB- FODB
Flight plan informationMeteorological information
Aviation informationLocation information
Departure/arrival informationTraffic flow information
TOPS/ADEX
TEPS
TAPS
TEAM
Source: Japan Civil Aviation Bureau, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT)
Aviation
centerAirport
Flight plan informationMeteorological information
Aviation information
High-speed transaction processing
Acceptance of high-volume/high-speed transaction request
High-speed processing using memory database
Development of apps focusing on business logic
Replacement of apps with uninterrupted service
Distributed data on multiple servers
Transparent data access
High-speed replication between memory devices
Automatic high-speed switching if failure occurs
Replication to RDBMS
Replication to remote areas
RDBMSRDBMSMemory database
Apps Apps Apps
DIOSA/XTP: Control of apps execution and communication
DIOSA/XTP: Memory cache
DIOSA/XTP: Data storeData conversion/communications options
Memory database
Data Data Data Data
Data Data Data Data
Reliability and availability of apps
Rapidity and availability of data access
Availability and continuity of data
Advanced implementation of apps by controlling transactions
Technologies for Achieving Digital Transformation (DX) of Social Systems: DX of Airports
Laying the Groundwork for the Next Generation of Air Traffic Control
NEC Technical Journal/Vol.16 No.1/Special Issue on Social Infrastructure that Guarantees Safety, Security, Fairness, and Efficiency 59
air-route surveillance sensor processing (HARP) system which began operations in 2018. These are discussed in detail below.
One of the primary responsibilities of air traffic con-trollers is to ensure that pilots maintain sufficient space between airplanes to avoid accidents. To do this, con-trollers need access to the flight plans of all the aircraft in their zone, as well as real time location data (Fig. 2). In Japan, FACE plays a key role in digitization and data sharing, while HARP provides pivotal information on the operation status of the various flights. Both systems are critical to the digital transformation (DX) of air traffic control systems.
2.2.1 FACE — supporting DX of air traffic management infra-
structure
Air traffic controllers manage air traffic using flight plans submitted by operators such as airline companies before flights. Flight plans include aviation call signs, de-parture airports, scheduled time of departure, destina-tion airports, flight duration, cruising altitude, and other information. To help achieve more sophisticated air traf-fic control, we are developing a system that allows such information to be used as more detailed flight object data (to trigger DX). FACE serves as a mission-critical component of this advanced traffic control system (Fig. 3) which is transitioning from conventional operation with humans (controllers) handling each element of flight plans individually to one in which integrated flight object data managed by FACE supports supervision and decision making of controllers, thereby helping to achieve safer, more efficient air traffic control.
The system requirements for FACE are as follows.(1) High availability: 24-hour non-stop operation
(2) Processing performance: Delay-free data process-ing for all target airplanes of air traffic control and linkage with related systems
(3) Processing capacity: Management of data for all target airplanes of air traffic control
NEC technology supports the two of the three require-ments FACE requires ― high availability and processing performance.
FACE utilizes NEC’s DIOSA/XTP, which is a high-reli-ability, high-availability, large-volume high speed trans-action processing platform that supports next-gener-ation social infrastructure. DIOSA/XTP is a proprietary NEC software product that supports the construction of a large-scale, highly expandable, high-reliability, and high-availability system. The DIOSA/XTP platform achieves large-volume, high-speed transaction process-ing thanks to high-speed data access supported by im-proved reliability and availability with built-in fail-safes that can be activated in the event of system failure.
Configuration concept and features of DIOSA/XTP are shown in Fig. 4.
2.2.2 HARP effectively exploits sensor data
To achieve air traffic management that is both safer and more efficient, accurate aircraft location data must be collected in real time and delivered to air traffic control-lers and air traffic control systems. Location data can be obtained using radars, as well as sensor technology such as the wide-area multilateration (WAM) sensor, which detects signals from aircraft at multiple receiving stations
Fig. 5 Outline of multi-sensor processing compatibility of HARP3).
Multi-sensor processing compatibility
Compatible with systems other than radar such as ADS-B and WAM, HARP coordinates combined aircraft information at 4 air traffic control centers
Air route surveillance radar (ARSR)
Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast
(ADS-B)
Wide-area multilateration
(WAM)
Hybrid air-route surveillance sensor processing equipment
(HARP)
Fukuoka Air Traffic Control Center
Kobe Air Traffic Control Center
Tokyo Air Traffic Control Center
Sapporo Air Traffic Control Center
Source: Air Traffic Control Association, Japan
Fig. 6 The evolution of essential information for aircraft operation4).
Fig. 7 Evolution of aviation communications and data sharing systems.
Source: Council to Promote Future Air Traffic Control Systems
AIXM
FIXM
IWXXM
Integration of data
Standardization
Aeronauticalinformation
Flight
Meteorologicalinformation
information
Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network (AFTN)
Common ICAO Data Interchange Network (CIDIN)
First generation: Teletype communications
Second generation: E-mail (X.400, X.500)
SWIM (System Wide Information Management)
Third generation: Web service/SOA
Evolution of aviation communications and data sharing systems
Called Common Aeronautical Data Interchange Network (CADIN) in Japan
Air Traffic Services [ATS] Message Handling Services (AMHS)
Increasing capacity of exchanged messages, forwarding binary files (XML), enhancing security, etc.
Technologies for Achieving Digital Transformation (DX) of Social Systems: DX of Airports
Laying the Groundwork for the Next Generation of Air Traffic Control
NEC Technical Journal/Vol.16 No.1/Special Issue on Social Infrastructure that Guarantees Safety, Security, Fairness, and Efficiency60
to position the aircraft, and the automatic dependent sur-veillance-broadcast (ADS-B) sensor, which automatically broadcasts aircraft location information (Fig. 5). By tak-ing advantage of the high reliability of radar together with the high precision and high frequency of WAM and ADS-B, HARP is able to obtain extremely precise aircraft location information derived from multiple sensors and provide it to air traffic controllers in real time.
3. Supporting DX in Air Traffic Management
3.1 Digitization in the air traffic management sector
The air traffic management sector is now undergoing a period of transition to increased data sophistication (from text format to XML/GML format). For example, it is planned that a new data conversion model called a flight information exchange model (FIXM) will be intro-duced to convert text-format flight plans to XML-format flight object information (Fig. 6).
Similarly, international standardization is underway as evidenced by the fact that weather information will be standardized in the ICAO Meteorological Information Ex-change Model (IWXXM) and aircraft safety related infor-mation will be standardized in the Aeronautical Informa-tion Exchange Model (AIXM). Various efforts for social implementation of these standards are also underway.
To handle the increasingly complex data being pro-duced, aviation communications and information sharing systems have been updated as shown in Fig. 7.
These shifts reflect international trends towards uni-versal standards as epitomized by the System-Wide Information Management (SWIM) system whose pro-ponents are hoping to achieve a global-scale “system of systems.” These efforts are essential in the air traffic management sector. In today’s interconnected world, it
would be counterproductive for individual countries to develop independent air traffic management systems of their own when a necessary assumption is that many flights will be on international routes (Fig. 8).
With an eye towards integrated management of air traffic data ― including the FACE system, NEC has taken the initiative in developing systems to handle high vol-umes of complex data and is now reviewing social im-plementation of SWIM. We are now actively participating in international validation projects in the Asia-Pacific region and acting as the driving force, together with the United States, in pushing forward international efforts to achieve universal standards.
3.2 Promoting DX in air traffic management
One of the most important reasons why we are com-mitted to DX in air traffic management is to enhance the international competitiveness of Japan’s airline and airport companies, while accelerating digitization of the aviation industry as a whole. To achieve this, we will also make efforts to help the airline and airport com-
Fig. 9 Passenger-oriented DX in air traffic management.
Fig. 8 NEC’s commitment to international validation of SWIM.
the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). We developed a global enterprise messaging service (GEMS) and
SWIM Activities
MGD
August 2014MGD: Florida
April 2016MGD2: FloridaDevelopment of NEC GEMS
June 2020Florida
November 2019Bangkok and Singapore
Server developmentView prototype
Presentation Participation in demonstration/presentation
Server development Server development
Participation in demonstration
IIH&V: Florida
Participation in demonstration
NEC has actively engaged in R&D into SWIM. We participated in the Mini-Global Demonstration (MGD) led by
conducted connection tests in collaboration with the FAA. We are now participating in the ASEAN-SWIMdemonstration and plan to perform a newvalidation with the United States.
2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
MGD2 IIH&V(FF-ICE) APAC-SWIM FF-ICE/X
Operator(airline/airport)
Passenger(end-user)
Creation ofpassenger-oriented
services
Japan Civil Aviation Bureau
(JCAB)
Technologies for Achieving Digital Transformation (DX) of Social Systems: DX of Airports
Laying the Groundwork for the Next Generation of Air Traffic Control
NEC Technical Journal/Vol.16 No.1/Special Issue on Social Infrastructure that Guarantees Safety, Security, Fairness, and Efficiency 61
Authors’ Profiles
SHOTA TakeshiSenior ManagerRadio Application, Guidance and Electro-Optics Division
YOSHIDA HiroakiManagerRadio Application, Guidance and Electro-Optics Division
Reference1) MLIT Civil Aviation Bureau: Overview of Flight Object
Administration Center (FACE) System (Japanese) https://www.mlit.go.jp/koku/content/001358997.pdf2) DIOSA/XTP: Large-Volume High Speed Transaction
Processing Platform (Japanese) https://jpn.nec.com/diosaxtp/index.html3) BANNO Kimiharu: Challenges We Will Face in National
Air Traffic Control and Actions to Address Them, 2016 Air Traffic Control Seminar, October 2016 (Japanese)
http://atcaj.or. jp/wordpress/wp-content/up-loads/2017/01/H28_ATCAJ_Seminar_mlit.pdf
4) Council to Promote Future Air Traffic Control Systems Information Management Study Working Group: 2014 Activity Report, 2015 (Japanese)
https://www.mlit.go.jp/common/001088139.pdf
panies achieve utilization of data that can contribute to improved value of experience from the viewpoint of passengers. This goes beyond conventional efforts to improve the efficiency and sophistication of air traffic control operations and airport management and involves effectively utilizing data to improve the customer expe-rience (Fig. 9).
When SWIM comes online, all operators will be con-nected to each other. Full utilization of SWIM data will improve the customer experience and revolutionize op-erator productivity. For example, by linking data from airline companies with intermodal passenger transport and communities, it will be possible to offer a wide range of services ― such as seamless multimodal route search ― to help travelers to enjoy pleasant, stress-free trips. This technology can also help to enhance the work expe-rience by optimizing staffing and reforming work styles.
Building on our long history and experience in the aviation industry, NEC will continue to contribute to the progress of the Japanese aviation industry by helping them achieve DX in air traffic management (Fig. 10).
4. Conclusion
In this paper we have outlined the efforts NEC is mak-ing to support air traffic management and help trans-form aviation into a more robust, future-ready industry. We will continue to adapt to changes in technology and the environment as we strive to develop systems that maximize customer value and contribute to further ad-vances in air transport.
In conclusion, we would like to express our gratitude to the MLIT Civil Aviation Bureau as well as other con-
Fig. 10 How DX in air traffic management is achieved.
cerned organizations and manufacturers who have been so generous in instructing and helping us develop the systems introduced in this paper.
JCAB data platform
Analysis
Airport/airline data storage
Meteorological informationApron/Gate information
No-show information
Air route
Tenant information
Delay information
Passenger informationFuel condition
AirportAirline
Intermodal passenger transport
Creation of new serviceDigital marketing
Optimization of fuelLinkage withintermodal passenger transport
Optimal staffing
Improved value of customer experience
Productivity revolution of
operators
Meteorological informationApron/Gate information
No-show information
Air route
Tenant information
Delay information
Passenger informationFuel condition
Intermodal passenger transport
Technologies for Achieving Digital Transformation (DX) of Social Systems: DX of Airports
Laying the Groundwork for the Next Generation of Air Traffic Control
NEC Technical Journal/Vol.16 No.1/Special Issue on Social Infrastructure that Guarantees Safety, Security, Fairness, and Efficiency62
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