Cluster DetectionMethod of Endogenous Security Abnormal Attack Behavior in Air Traffic Control Network

In order to enhance the accuracy of Air Traffic Control(ATC)cybersecurity attack detection,in this paper,a new clustering detection method is designed for air traffic control network security attacks.The feature set for ATC cybersecurity attacks is constructed by setting the feature states,adding recursive features,and determining the feature criticality.The expected information gain and entropy of the feature data are computed to determine the information gain of the feature data and reduce the interference of similar feature data.An autoencoder is introduced into the AI(artificial intelligence)algorithm to encode and decode the characteristics of ATC network security attack behavior to reduce the dimensionality of the ATC network security attack behavior data.Based on the above processing,an unsupervised learning algorithm for clustering detection of ATC network security attacks is designed.First,determine the distance between the clustering clusters of ATC network security attack behavior characteristics,calculate the clustering threshold,and construct the initial clustering center.Then,the new average value of all feature objects in each cluster is recalculated as the new cluster center.Second,it traverses all objects in a cluster of ATC network security attack behavior feature data.Finally,the cluster detection of ATC network security attack behavior is completed by the computation of objective functions.The experiment took three groups of experimental attack behavior data sets as the test object,and took the detection rate,false detection rate and recall rate as the test indicators,and selected three similar methods for comparative test.The experimental results show that the detection rate of this method is about 98%,the false positive rate is below 1%,and the recall rate is above 97%.Research shows that this method can improve the detection performance of security attacks in air traffic control network.

Audio-Text Multimodal Speech Recognition via Dual-Tower Architecture for Mandarin Air Traffic Control Communications

In air traffic control communications (ATCC), misunderstandings between pilots and controllers could result in fatal aviation accidents. Fortunately, advanced automatic speech recognition technology has emerged as a promising means of preventing miscommunications and enhancing aviation safety. However, most existing speech recognition methods merely incorporate external language models on the decoder side, leading to insufficient semantic alignment between speech and text modalities during the encoding phase. Furthermore, it is challenging to model acoustic context dependencies over long distances due to the longer speech sequences than text, especially for the extended ATCC data. To address these issues, we propose a speech-text multimodal dual-tower architecture for speech recognition. It employs cross-modal interactions to achieve close semantic alignment during the encoding stage and strengthen its capabilities in modeling auditory long-distance context dependencies. In addition, a two-stage training strategy is elaborately devised to derive semantics-aware acoustic representations effectively. The first stage focuses on pre-training the speech-text multimodal encoding module to enhance inter-modal semantic alignment and aural long-distance context dependencies. The second stage fine-tunes the entire network to bridge the input modality variation gap between the training and inference phases and boost generalization performance. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed speech-text multimodal speech recognition method on the ATCC and AISHELL-1 datasets. It reduces the character error rate to 6.54% and 8.73%, respectively, and exhibits substantial performance gains of 28.76% and 23.82% compared with the best baseline model. The case studies indicate that the obtained semantics-aware acoustic representations aid in accurately recognizing terms with similar pronunciations but distinctive semantics. The research provides a novel modeling paradigm for semantics-aware speech recognition in air traffic control communications, which could contribute to the advancement of intelligent and efficient aviation safety management.

A Robust Conformer-Based Speech Recognition Model for Mandarin Air Traffic Control

This study aims to address the deviation in downstream tasks caused by inaccurate recognition results when applying Automatic Speech Recognition(ASR)technology in the Air Traffic Control(ATC)field.This paper presents a novel cascaded model architecture,namely Conformer-CTC/Attention-T5(CCAT),to build a highly accurate and robust ATC speech recognition model.To tackle the challenges posed by noise and fast speech rate in ATC,the Conformer model is employed to extract robust and discriminative speech representations from raw waveforms.On the decoding side,the Attention mechanism is integrated to facilitate precise alignment between input features and output characters.The Text-To-Text Transfer Transformer(T5)language model is also introduced to handle particular pronunciations and code-mixing issues,providing more accurate and concise textual output for downstream tasks.To enhance the model’s robustness,transfer learning and data augmentation techniques are utilized in the training strategy.The model’s performance is optimized by performing hyperparameter tunings,such as adjusting the number of attention heads,encoder layers,and the weights of the loss function.The experimental results demonstrate the significant contributions of data augmentation,hyperparameter tuning,and error correction models to the overall model performance.On the Our ATC Corpus dataset,the proposed model achieves a Character Error Rate(CER)of 3.44%,representing a 3.64%improvement compared to the baseline model.Moreover,the effectiveness of the proposed model is validated on two publicly available datasets.On the AISHELL-1 dataset,the CCAT model achieves a CER of 3.42%,showcasing a 1.23%improvement over the baseline model.Similarly,on the LibriSpeech dataset,the CCAT model achieves a Word Error Rate(WER)of 5.27%,demonstrating a performance improvement of 7.67%compared to the baseline model.Additionally,this paper proposes an evaluation criterion for assessing the robustness of ATC speech recognition systems.In robustness evaluation experiments based on this criterion,the proposed model demonstrates a performance improvement of 22%compared to the baseline model.

Review on artificial intelligence techniques for improving representative air traffic management capability

The use of artificial intelligence(AI)has increased since the middle of the 20th century,as evidenced by its applications to a wide range of engineering and science problems.Air traffic management(ATM)is becoming increasingly automated and autonomous,making it lucrative for AI applications.This paper presents a systematic review of studies that employ AI techniques for improving ATM capability.A brief account of the history,structure,and advantages of these methods is provided,followed by the description of their applications to several representative ATM tasks,such as air traffic services(ATS),airspace management(AM),air traffic flow management(ATFM),and flight operations(FO).The major contribution of the current review is the professional survey of the AI application to ATM alongside with the description of their specific advantages:(i)these methods provide alternative approaches to conventional physical modeling techniques,(ii)these methods do not require knowing relevant internal system parameters,(iii)these methods are computationally more efficient,and(iv)these methods offer compact solutions to multivariable problems.In addition,this review offers a fresh outlook on future research.One is providing a clear rationale for the model type and structure selection for a given ATM mission.Another is to understand what makes a specific architecture or algorithm effective for a given ATM mission.These are among the most important issues that will continue to attract the attention of the AI research community and ATM work teams in the future.

Evolution of Air Traffic Management Concept of Operations and Its Impact on the System Architecture

The air traffic management system(ATM)has the task of ensuring safe,orderly and expeditious flow of air traffic.The ATM system architecture is very much dependent on the concept of operations(ConOps).Over the years the evolution in ConOps has resulted in changes in the ATM′s physical architecture,improving its physical infrastructure,increasing the levels of automation and making operational changes to improve air traffic flow,to cope with increasing demand for air travel.However,what is less clear is the impact of such changes in ConOps on the ATM′s functional architecture.This is vital for ensuring optimality in the implementation of the physical architecture components to support the ATM functions.This paper reviews the changes in the ConOps over the years,proposes a temporally invariant ATM functional model,and discusses some of the main key technologies expected to make significant improvements to the ATM system.

Identification of Information-Seeking Behaviors from Air Traffic Controllers′ Eye Movements

Air traffic controllers are the important parts of air traffic management system who are responsible for the safety and efficiency of the system.They make traffic management decisions based on information acquired from various sources.The understanding of their information seeking behaviors is still limited.We aim to identify controllers′ behavior through the examination of the correlations between controllers′eye movements and air traffic.Sixteen air traffic controllers were invited to participate real-time simulation experiments,during which the data of their eye ball movements and air traffic were recorded.Tweny-three air traffic complexity metrics and six eye movements metrics were calculated to examine their relationships.Two correlational methods,Pearson′s correlation and Spearman′s correlation,were tested between every eye-traffic pair of metrics.The results indicate that controllers′two kinds of information-seeking behaviors can be identified from their eye movements:Targets tracking,and confliction recognition.The study on controllers′ eye movements may contribute to the understanding of information-seeking mechanisms leading to the development of more intelligent automations in the future.

Chaotic Characteristic Analysis of Air Traffic System

Chaotic characteristics of traffic flow time series is analyzed to further investigate nonlinear characteristics of air traffic system.Phase space is reconstructed both by time delay which is built through mutual information,and by embedding dimension which is based on false nearest neighbors method.In order to analyze chaotic characteristics of time series,correlation dimensions and the largest Lyapunov exponents are calculated through Grassberger-Procaccia(G-P)algorithm and small-data method.Five-day radar data from the control center in Guangzhou area are analyzed and the results show that saturated correlation dimensions with self-similar structures exist in time series,and the largest Lyapunov exponents are all equal to zero and not sensitive to initial conditions.Air traffic system is affected by multiple factors,containing inherent randomness,which lead to chaos.Only grasping chaotic characteristics can air traffic be predicted and controlled accurately.

A Spatial-Temporal Network Perspective for the Propagation Dynamics of Air Traffic Delays

Intractable delays occur in air traffic due to the imbalance between ever-increasing air traffic demand and limited airspace capacity.As air traffic is associated with complex air transport systems,delays can be magnified and propagated throughout these systems,resulting in the emergent behavior known as delay propagation.An understanding of delay propagation dynamics is pertinent to modern air traffic management.In this work,we present a complex network perspective of delay propagation dynamics.Specifically,we model air traffic scenarios using spatial–temporal networks with airports as the nodes.To establish the dynamic edges between the nodes,we develop a delay propagation method and apply it to a given set of air traffic schedules.Based on the constructed spatial-temporal networks,we suggest three metrics-magnitude,severity,and speed-to gauge delay propagation dynamics.To validate the effectiveness of the proposed method,we carry out case studies on domestic flights in the Southeastern Asia region(SAR)and the United States.Experiments demonstrate that the propagation magnitude in terms of the number of flights affected by delay propagation and the amount of propagated delays for the US traffic are respectively five and ten times those of the SAR.Experiments further reveal that the propagation speed for US traffic is eight times faster than that of the SAR.The delay propagation dynamics reveal that about six hub airports in the SAR have significant propagated delays,while the situation in the United States is considerably worse,with a corresponding number of around 16.This work provides a potent tool for tracing the evolution of air traffic delays.

SESAR:The Past,Present,and Future of European Air Traffic Management Research

The Single European Sky Air Traffic management(ATM)Research(SESAR)project is the technological pillar of the European Commission’s Single European Sky Initiative to modernize ATM.Here,we describe the process of establishing SESAR and the main parts of the project:the research and development(R&D)part,which is led by the SESAR Joint Undertaking;the deployment part,which is managed by the SESAR Deployment Manager;and the European ATM Master Plan,which collects and lays out both the R&D and deployment needs.The latest European ATM Master Plan was adopted just prior to the current pandemic.The huge loss in air traffic due to the pandemic,and the speed of the recovery of the aviation industry will require reprioritization,but the main elements that have been established-particularly those in support of the environment-remain valid.

Integrated Evaluation of Air Traffic Controller Workload Based on Matter-Element Analysis

A model for evaluating the controller workload was presented based on matter-element analysis, particularly from a mansystem engineering perspective. On the basis of a questionnaire survey, 18 kinds of indexes which influence the controller workload were determined. By establishing the classical field and node field of the controller workload, the correlation function of the controller workload grade was obtained; then the correlation degree and estimated grade of controller workload were given. A case study verifies the feasibility of the proposed evaluation method.

Exploring critical attributes during air traffic congestion with a fuzzy DEMATEL–ANP technique: a case study in Ninoy Aquino International Airport

The constant growth of air travel in the Philippines has brought about significant consequences to air traffic congestion. Given limited resources, major airports seek to address this issue while considering various attributes generally affecting air transportation. This paper adopts fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory-analytic network process （DEMATEL-ANP） to identify the most critical attributes in the commercial aviation industry. A case study participated by key experts of Ninoy Aquino International Airport was conducted to illustrate the proposed approach. The fuzzy DEMATELANP model performed satisfactorily as it was able to extract the global priority vectors of attributes under a fuzzy environment. The results showed that aviation safety is most prioritized, as can also be seen from the significant influence it brings on other attributes. Following next to safety in terms of priority axe attributes that address the general air transportation system such as economic value, environmental value, social value, equitable treatment of competing airline, customer goodwill, and utilization of runway and terminal. Then, attributes relating to passenger cost, fuel cost, extra crew cost, landing/take-off fee, and cost of using flight routes axe of last priority. Given the order of priorities and criticality of each attribute, shortterm and long-term policies can be framed accordingly to propose air traffic flow management actions that can best address the issue on congestion.

Effect of Working Experience on Air Traffic Controller Eye Movement

Eye movement is an important indicator of information-seeking behavior and provides insight into cognitive strategies which are vital for decision-making.Various measures based on eye movements have been proposed to capture humans’ability to process information in a complex environment.The effectiveness of these measures has not yet been fully explored in the field of air traffic management.This paper presents a comparative study on eye-movement measures in air traffic controllers with different levels of working experience.Two commonly investigated oculomotor behaviors,fixation and saccades,together with gaze entropy,are examined.By comparing the statistical properties of the relevant metrics,it is shown that working experience has a notable effect on eye-movement patterns.Both fixation and saccades differ between qualified and novice controllers,with the former type of controller employing more efficient searching strategies.These findings are useful in enhancing the quality of controller training and contributing to an understanding of the information-seeking mechanisms humans use when executing complex tasks.

Ontology-Based Approach for Human Competency Gap Analysis in Air Traffic Management:A Case Study of Georgia

The Global Air Navigation Plan is a flexible global engineering approach that allows all States to advance their Air Navigation capacities based on their specific operational requirements.Aviation professionals have an essential role in the transition to,and successful implementation of the GANP.The research work is focused on the creation of methodology for the partial automation of the comparison competences of Air Traffic Management(ATM)personal and synthesis of training courses and modules,using a formal,ontology-based approach as a tool to solve these problems.One of the problems in the implementation of the GANP is that,on the one hand,there are currently no unified requirements for all categories of ATM personnel,and on the other hand,the development of ATM technologies is far ahead of the pace of training of personnel of appropriate qualifications.This problem becomes even more noticeable in countries that have just started an active modernization of ATC systems and do not have enough experience in this field.The paper describes the general methodological approach based on the education ontology modelling for human competency gap analysis in ATM and for gap analysis between the university curricula outcomes and the ATM requirements.The ontology of key personnel competencies issues for the design and integration of large-scale future ATM programmes is proposed.

Intelligent Virtual Assistant System(IVAS) for Air Traffic Controllers

Air traffic control is an essential obligation in the aviation industry to have safe and efficient air transportation.Year by year,the workload and on-job-stress of the air traffic controllers are rapidly increasing due to the rapid growth of air traveling.Controllers are usually dealing with multiple aircrafts at a time and must make quick and accurate decisions to ensure the safety of aircrafts.Heavy workload and high responsibilities create air traffic control a stressful job that sometimes could be error-prone and time-consuming,since controlling and decision-making are solely dependent on human intelligence.To provide effective solutions for the mentioned on the job challenges of the controllers,this study proposed an intelligent virtual assistant system(IVAS)to assist the controllers thereby to reduce the controllers’workload.Consisting of four main parts,which are voice recognition,display conversation on screen,task execution,and text to speech,the proposed system is developed with the aid of artificial intelligence(AI)techniques to make speedy decisions and be free of human interventions.IVAS is a computer-based system that can be activated by the voice of the air traffic controller and then appropriately assist to control the flight.IVAS identifies the words spoken by the controller and then a virtual assistant navigates to collect the data requested from the controllers,which allows additional or free time to the controllers to contemplate more on the work or could assist to another aircraft.The Google speech application programming interface(API)converts audio to text to recognize keywords.AI agent is trained using the Hidden marko model(HMM)algorithm such that it could learn the characteristics of the distinct voices of the controllers.At this stage,the proposed IVAS can be used to provide training for novice air traffic controllers effectively.The system is to be developed as a real-time system which could be used at the air traffic controlling base for actual traffic controlling purposes and the system is to be further upgraded to perform the task by recognizing keywords directly from the pilot voice command.

Air Traffic Volume and Air Traffic Control Human Errors

Navigable airspaces are becoming more crowded with increasing air traffic, and the number of accidents caused by human errors is increasing. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the relationship between air traffic volume and human error in air traffic control (ATC). First, the paper identifies categories and elements of ATC human error through a review of existing literature, and a study through interviews and surveys of ATC safety experts. And then the paper presents the results of an experiment conducted on 52 air traffic controllers sampled from the Korean ATC organization to find out if there is any relationship between traffic volume and air traffic controller human errors. An analysis of the experiment clearly showed that several types of ATC human error are influenced by traffic volume. We hope that the paper will make its contribution to aviation safety by providing a realistic basis for securing proper manpower and facility in accordance with the level of air traffic volume.

Modeling of 3-D Air Traffic Complexity Based on Route Structure Constraints

It is an important issue to assess traffic situation complexity for air traffic management.There is a lack of systematic review of the existing air traffic complexity assessment methods,and there is no consideration of the role of airspace and traffic coordination mechanism.A new 3-D airspace complexity measurement method is proposed based on route structure constraints to evaluate the air traffic complexity objectively.Firstly,the model of the impact on horizontal and vertical direction for“aircraft pair”is established based on the route guidance.After that,the coupled complexity model for 3-D airspace is given according to the modification on the model in terms of flight standardization.Finally,the global model of the airspace traffic complexity is established.It is proved by the experimental data from the actual operation in airspace that the proposed model can reflect the space coupling situation and complexity of aircraft.At the same time,it can precisely describe the actual operation of civil aviation in China.

Human Resource Management:A Case Study of the Air Traffic Controller Strike in 1981

The article discusses several hemispheres of human resource management based on a typical case review. The study presents the main problems of the case from both employees and organizations; the issued problems involve compensations and benefits,restructuring,job design,and training. Based on the analysis of the case,two alternative solutions state that the potential routes for the organizations to avoid serious negative results. The study introduces a number of recommendations that can be used as a reference for other organizations to avoid similar risks.

Air traffic monitoring using optimized ADS-B CubeSat constellation

The primary technique used for air traffic surveillance is radar.However,nowadays,its role in surveillance is gradually being replaced by the recently adopted Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast(ADS-B).ADS-B offers a higher accuracy,lower power consumption,and longer range than radar,thus providing more safety to aircraft.The coverage of terrestrial radar and ADS-B is confined to continental parts of the globe,leaving oceans and poles uncovered by real-time surveillance measures.This study presents an optimized Low-Earth Orbit(LEO)-based ADS-B constellation for global air traffic surveillance over intercontinental trans-oceanic flight routes.The optimization algorithm is based on performance evaluation parameters,i.e.,coverage time,satellite availability,and orbit stability(precession and perigee rotation),and communication analysis.The results indicate that the constellation provides ample coverage in the simulated global oceanic regions.The constellation is a feasible and cost-effective solution for global air supervision,which can supplement terrestrial ADS-B and radar systems.

Multi-faceted spatio-temporal network for weather-aware air traffic flow prediction in multi-airport system

As one of the core modules for air traffic flow management,Air Traffic Flow Prediction(ATFP)in the Multi-Airport System(MAS)is a prerequisite for demand and capacity balance in the complex meteorological environment.Due to the challenge of implicit interaction mechanism among traffic flow,airspace capacity and weather impact,the Weather-aware ATFP(Wa-ATFP)is still a nontrivial issue.In this paper,a novel Multi-faceted Spatio-Temporal Graph Convolutional Network(MSTGCN)is proposed to address the Wa-ATFP within the complex operations of MAS.Firstly,a spatio-temporal graph is constructed with three different nodes,including airport,route,and fix to describe the topology structure of MAS.Secondly,a weather-aware multi-faceted fusion module is proposed to integrate the feature of air traffic flow and the auxiliary features of capacity and weather,which can effectively address the complex impact of severe weather,e.g.,thunderstorms.Thirdly,to capture the latent connections of nodes,an adaptive graph connection constructor is designed.The experimental results with the real-world operational dataset in Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area,China,validate that the proposed approach outperforms the state-of-the-art machine-learning and deep-learning based baseline approaches in performance.