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.

Stochastic Air Traffic Flow Management for Demand and Capacity Balancing Under Capacity Uncertainty

This paper introduces an innovative approach to the synchronized demand-capacity balance with special focus on sector capacity uncertainty within a centrally controlled collaborative air traffic flow management(ATFM)framework.Further with previous study,the uncertainty in capacity is considered as a non-negligible issue regarding multiple reasons,like the impact of weather,the strike of air traffic controllers(ATCOs),the military use of airspace and the spatiotemporal distribution of nonscheduled flights,etc.These recessive factors affect the outcome of traffic flow optimization.In this research,the focus is placed on the impact of sector capacity uncertainty on demand and capacity balancing(DCB)optimization and ATFM,and multiple options,such as delay assignment and rerouting,are intended for regulating the traffic flow.A scenario optimization method for sector capacity in the presence of uncertainties is used to find the approximately optimal solution.The results show that the proposed approach can achieve better demand and capacity balancing and determine perfect integer solutions to ATFM problems,solving large-scale instances(24 h on seven capacity scenarios,with 6255 flights and 8949 trajectories)in 5-15 min.To the best of our knowledge,our experiment is the first to tackle large-scale instances of stochastic ATFM problems within the collaborative ATFM framework.

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.

Influential Node Ranking and Invulnerability of Air Traffic Cyber Physical System

To ensure flight safety,the complex network method is used to study the influence and invulnerability of air traffic cyber physical system(CPS)nodes.According to the rules of air traffic management,the logical coupling relationship between routes and sectors is analyzed,an air traffic CPS network model is constructed,and the indicators of node influence and invulnerability are established.The K-shell algorithm is improved to identify node influence,and the invulnerability is analyzed under random and selective attacks.Taking Airspace in Eastern China as an example,its influential nodes are sorted by degree,namely,K-shell,the improved K-shell(IKS)and betweenness centrality.The invulnerability of air traffic CPS under different attacks is analyzed.Results show that IKS can effectively identify the influential nodes in the air traffic CPS network,and IKS and betweenness centrality are the two key indicators that affect the invulnerability of air traffic CPS.

En-route Sector Complexity Control Strategies in Air Traffic Management

Along with the rapid development of air traffic, the contradiction between conventional air traffic management(ATM)and the increasingly complex air traffic situations is more severe,which essentially reduces the operational efficiency of air transport systems. Thus,objectively measuring the air traffic situation complexity becomes a concern in the field of ATM. Most existing studies focus on air traffic complexity assessment,and rarely on the scientific guidance of complex traffic situations. According to the projected time of aircraft arriving at the target sector boundary,we formulated two control strategies to reduce the air traffic complexity. The strategy of entry time optimization was applied to the controllable flights in the adjacent upstream sectors. In contrast,the strategy of flying dynamic speed optimization was applied to the flights in the target sector. During the process of solving complexity control models,we introduced a physical programming method. We transformed the multi-objective optimization problem involving complexity and delay to single-objective optimization problems by designing different preference function. Actual data validated the two complexity control strategies can eliminate the high-complexity situations in reality. The control strategy based on the entry time optimization was more efficient than that based on the speed dynamic optimization. A basic framework for studying air traffic complexity management was preliminarily established. Our findings will help the implementation of a complexity-based ATM.

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 Similar Air Traffic Scenes with Active Metric Learning

The rapid growth of air traffic has continuously increased the workload of controllers,which has become an important factor restricting sector capacity.If similar traffic scenes can be identified,the historical decision-making experience may be used to help controllers decide control strategies quickly.Considering that there are many traffic scenes and it is hard to label them all,in this paper,we propose an active SVM metric learning(ASVM2L)algorithm to measure and identify the similar traffic scenes.First of all,we obtain some traffic scene samples correctly labeled by experienced air traffic controllers.We design an active sampling strategy based on voting difference to choose the most valuable unlabeled samples and label them.Then the metric matrix of all the labeled samples is learned and used to complete the classification of traffic scenes.We verify the effectiveness of ASVM2L on standard data sets,and then use it to measure and classify the traffic scenes on the historical air traffic data set of the Central South Sector of China.The experimental results show that,compared with other existing methods,the proposed method can use the information of traffic scene samples more thoroughly and achieve better classification performance under limited labeled samples.

Empirical Exploration of Air Traffic Control Behaviour at Terminal Maneuvering Area:From an Air Traffic Flow Aspect

In a large-volume,high-density traffic background,air traffic manifests fluid-like microscopical characteristics.The characteristics are formed by the micro tailing actions between individual aircraft.Aircraft headway refers to the time interval between successive flying aircraft in air traffic flow,which is one of the most important characteristics of air traffic flow.The variation in aircraft headway reveals the air traffic control behaviour.In this paper,we study the characteristics of air traffic control behaviours by analyzing radar tracks in a terminal maneuvering area.The headway in arrival traffic flow is measured after the determination of aircraft trailing relationships.The headway evolutionary characteristics for different control decisions and the headway evolutionary characteristics in different phase-states are discussed,and some interesting findings are gotten.This work may be helpful for scholars and managers in understanding the intrinsic nature of air traffic flow and in the development of intelligent assistant decision systems for air traffic management.

Forecast of Air Traffic Controller Demand Based on SVR and Parameter Optimization

As the main body of air traffic control safety,the air traffic controller is an important part of the whole air traffic control system. According to the relevant data of civil aviation over the years,a mapping model between flight support sorties and air traffic controller demand is constructed by using the prediction algorithm of support vector regression(SVR) based on grid search and cross-validation. Then the model predicts the demand for air traffic controllers in seven regions. Additionally,according to the employment data of civil aviation universities,the future training scale of air traffic controller is predicted. The forecast results show that the average relative error of the number of controllers predicted by the algorithm is 1.73%,and the prediction accuracy is higher than traditional regression algorithms. Under the influence of the epidemic,the demand for air traffic controllers will decrease in the short term,but with the control of the epidemic,the demand of air traffic controllers will return to the pre-epidemic level and gradually increase. It is expected that the controller increment will be about 816 by 2028. The forecast results of the demand for air traffic controllers provide a theoretical basis for the introduction and training of medium and long-term air traffic controllers,and also provide method guidance and decision support for the establishment of professional reserve and dynamic control mechanism in the air traffic control system.

Fluctuations in airport arrival and departure traffic:A network analysis

Air traffic is a typical complex system, in which movements of traffic components （pilots, controllers, equipment, and environment）, especially airport arrival and departure traffic, form complicated spatial and temporal dynamics. The fluctuations of airport arrival and departure traffic are studied from the point of view of networks as the special correlation between different airports. Our collected flow volume data on the time-dependent activity of US airport arrival and departure traffic indicate that the coupling between the average flux and the fluctuation of an individual airport obeys a certain scaling law with a wide variety of scaling exponents between 1/2 and 1. These scaling phenomena can explain the interaction between the airport internal dynamics （e.g. queuing at airports, a ground delay program and following flying traffic） and a change in the external （network-wide） traffic demand （e.g. an increase in traffic during peak hours every day）, allowing us to further understand the mechanisms governing the collective behaviour of the transportation system. We separate internal dynamics from external fluctuations using a scaling law which is helpful for us to systematically determine the origin of fluctuations in airport arrival and departure traffic, uncovering the collective dynamics. Hot spot features are observed in airport traffic data as the dynamical inhomogeneity in the fluxes of individual airports. The intrinsic characteristics of airport arrival and departure traffic under severe weather is discussed as well.

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.

Handling Label Noise in Air Traffic Complexity Evaluation Based on Confident Learning and XGBoost

Air traffic complexity is a critical indicator for air traffic operation,and plays an important role in air traffic management(ATM),such as airspace reconfiguration,air traffic flow management and allocation of air traffic controllers(ATCos).Recently,many machine learning techniques have been used to evaluate air traffic complexity by constructing a mapping from complexity related factors to air traffic complexity labels.However,the low quality of complexity labels,which is named as label noise,has often been neglected and caused unsatisfactory performance in air traffic complexity evaluation.This paper aims at label noise in air traffic complexity samples,and proposes a confident learning and XGBoost-based approach to evaluate air traffic complexity under label noise.The confident learning process is applied to filter out noisy samples with various label probability distributions,and XGBoost is used to train a robust and high-performance air traffic complexity evaluation model on the different label noise filtered ratio datasets.Experiments are carried out on a real dataset from the Guangzhou airspace sector in China,and the results prove that the appropriate label noise removal strategy and XGBoost algorithm can effectively mitigate the label noise problem and achieve better performance in air traffic complexity evaluation.

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.

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.

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.

Assessing Air Traffic Management Performance Interdependencies through Bayesian Networks： Preliminary Applications and Results

The performance model proposed by this study represents an innovative approach to deal with performance assessment in ATM （air traffic management）. It is based on Bayesian networks methodology, which presents several advantages but also some drawbacks as highlighted along the paper. We illustrate the main steps required for building the model and present a number of interesting results. The contribution of the paper is two-fold： （1） It presents a new methodological approach to deal with a problem which is of strategic importance for ANSPs （air navigation service providers）; （2） It provides insights on the interdependencies between factors influencing performance. Both results are considered particularly important nowadays, due to the SES （Single European Sky） performance scheme and its related target setting process.

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.