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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Design and Analysis of Computer Experiments Based on a Simulation Model of Air Traffic Flow Optimization in Panama

There is a growing in number of operations in aviation all over the world.This growing is increasing the necessity of innovation and new technology to respond the increment of the demand.As a respond of this demand,FAA(Federal Aviation Administration)is working with NextGen in the United States and the EUROCONTROL is implementing the Point Merge as solution in the air traffic flow management in Europe.However,the FAA alternative and EUROCONTROL alternative are not mutually exclusive since Panama,a small country in Latin America,is trying to use a combination between the vectoring approach and the Point Merge in the air traffic flow management.In addition,the AAC(Autoridad de Aereonautica Civil)and the Tocumen(Tocumen International Airport)are working in a continuous collaboration between FAA and Panama with the mutual challenge to improve the actual system.As a result,the main airline of Panama,the Compania Panamena de Aviacion(COPA Airlines),and the Autoridad de Aeronautica Civil(AAC)constructed a simulation model to select an air traffic flow alternative that can be able to change the actual situation.In other words,COPA Airlines and AAC are pursuing the minimization of the numbers of conflicts,the number of sequence actions,the flight time,the track flight distance and the fuel burn.Furthermore,this study aims to use the final draft of this previous analysis based on a simulation methodology to conduct a Design and Analysis of Computer Experiments with the final objective to increment the statistical significance of the actual model.

Bilevel Programming Model for Joint Scheduling of Arrival and Departure Flights Based on Traffic Scenario

In order to meet the needs of collaborative decision making,considering the different demands of air traffic control units,airlines,airports and passengers in various traffic scenarios,the joint scheduling problem of arrival and departure flights is studied systematically.According to the matching degree of capacity and flow,it is determined that the traffic state of arrival/departure operation in a certain period is peak or off-peak.The demands of all parties in each traffic state are analyzed,and the mathematical models of arrival/departure flight scheduling in each traffic state are established.Aiming at the four kinds of joint operation traffic scenarios of arrival and departure,the corresponding bi-level programming models for joint scheduling of arrival and departure flights are established,respectively,and the elitism genetic algorithm is designed to solve the models.The results show that:Compared with the first-come-firstserved method,in the scenarios of arrival peak&departure off-peak and arrival peak&departure peak,the departure flight equilibrium satisfaction is improved,and the runway occupation time of departure flight flow is reduced by 38.8%.In the scenarios of arrival off-peak&departure off-peak and departure peak&arrival off-peak,the arrival flight equilibrium delay time is significantly reduced,the departure flight equilibrium satisfaction is improved by 77.6%,and the runway occupation time of departure flight flow is reduced by 46.6%.Compared with other four kinds of strategies,the optimal scheduling method can better balance fairness and efficiency,so the scheduling results are more reasonable.

A Combined Arrival and Departure Scheduling for Multi-airport System

A combined arrival and departure scheduling problem is investigated for multi-airport system to alleviate the problem of airspace congestion and flight delay.Firstly,the combined scheduling problem for multi-airport system is defined through in-depth analysis of the characteristics of arrival and departure operations.Then,several constraints are taken into account,such as wake vortex separation,transfer separation,release separation,and separation in different runway operational modes.Furthermore,the scheduling model is constructed and simulated annealing algorithm is proposed by minimizing the total delay.Finally,Shanghai multi-airport system is chosen to conduct the simulation and validation.And the simulation results indicate that the proposed method is able to effectively improve the efficiency of arrival and departure operations for multi-airport system.

Analysis on Potential Conflict Frequency of Intersected Air Routes in Terminal Airspace Design

In order to obtain accurate conflict risks in terminal airspace design,the concept and calculation model of potential conflict frequency for intersected routes are proposed.Conflict frequency is represented by the product of horizontal conflict frequency and vertical conflict probability.The horizontal conflict frequency is derived from the probability density distribution of conflicts in a period of time.Based on the recorded radar trajectory data,the concept and model of ROUTE distance are proposed,and the probability density function of aircraft height at a specified ROUTE distance is deduced by kernel density estimation.Furthermore,vertical conflict probability and its horizontal distribution are achieved.Examples of three intersected arrival and departure route design schemes are studied.Compared with scheme 1,the conflict frequency values of the other two improved schemes decrease to53% and 24%,respectively.The results show that the model can quantify potential conflict frequency of intersected routes.

APPLICATION OF GRAY EVALUATION MODEL BASED ON AHP IN ATM SYSTEM

This paper presents a hierarchy model of Air Traffic Management (ATM) according to the security requirements in ATM system, analyzes it by grey assessment and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and evaluates it in details. It also provides theoretical support for building an effective evaluation system. The basic idea is to use AHP and Grey Assessment to obtain the weights of the indicators, and count grey evaluation coefficients with whitening function. The compositive clustering coefficients are obtained by combining the weights and the grey evaluation coefficients. Evaluation result can be gotten from the compositive clustering coefficients.

Sectorization Model of Terminal Airspace with Arrival and Departure Separation

Terminal airspace(TMA)is the airspace centering several military and civil aviation airports with complex route structure,limited airspace resources,traffic flow,difficult management and considerable airspace complexity.A scientific and rational sectorization of TMA can optimize airspace resources,and sufficiently utilize the control of human resources to ensure the safety of TMA.The functional sectorization model was established based on the route structure of arriving and departing aircraft as well as controlling requirements.Based on principles of sectorization and topological relations within a network,the arrival and departure sectorization model was established,using tree based ant colony algorithm(ACO)searching.Shanghai TMA was taken as an example to be sectorizaed,and the result showed that this model was superior to traditional ones when arrival and departure routes were separated at dense airport terminal airspace.

OPTIMAL FLOW CONTROL PROBLEM IN AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL:PARTⅠ

The fundamental case is considered in which flights from many destinations must be scheduled for arrival at a single congested airport having limited capacities.An air traffic control(ATC)model is developed in this case.A new and efficient algorithm for the optimal solution of ground holding strategy problem(GHSP)is put forward and verified by a numerical example.

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.