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Sorted by title
3-D Runway Surface Markings
CAASD has been conducting research on an innovative runway marking project that it created to help pilots and others operating vehicles on airport surfaces see critical "Hold Short" markings better. Painted on airport taxiways, these visual markings indicate areas at controlled airports that can not be crossed--the pilot must "hold short" of the marking--without prior permission from air traffic control.
ADS-B: An Evolution in Air Traffic Control
On June 30, 1956, two commercial planes collided in clear skies over the Grand Canyon, killing more than 100 people. Following that tragedy—and in the wake of more than 65 similar, often fatal, crashes between 1950 and 1955—the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was formed, which led to a significant leap in U.S. aviation safety.
Advanced Automated Systems for Air Traffic Controller Training
With a large percentage of the nation's present air traffic controllers expected to retire by 2015, the FAA will need to train over 10,000 new en route controllers over the next ten years. What makes this situation even more challenging is that training and certifying a controller now takes about three to five years and requires a great deal of supervision from working controllers. To help accelerate training to meet the anticipated demand for new controllers, MITRE’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) developed enrouteTrainer, an independent, stand-alone advanced automation training system.
Airspace Management
Today's airspace is a complex interconnected system in which airspace resources need to be managed from a global perspective. Because of changes in technology, operations, and user patterns, local airspace changes now have more far-reaching impacts than ever. New technologies for both users and service providers will also necessitate airspace changes. In addition, the mix of airspace users is changing as regional jets and commercial space operations compete for limited resources.
Anatomy of Air Travel Delays
Mounting air travel delays seem to be a fact of life. On the one hand, air commerce is universally used due to its increasing affordability, motivating the airlines to put more aircraft into service and to pack them full. This is good for the economy. On the other hand, the increased density and complexity of the resulting traffic on an already burdened air traffic control infrastructure is causing severe system meltdowns at an increasing rate.
AviationSimNet" Simplifies Testing of New Aviation Concepts
To increase joint research and reduce the cost and preparation required, the FAA’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD), operated by The MITRE Corporation, along with others in the aviation community, defined and developed a standard to facilitate distributed evaluations between simulation laboratories. Known as AviationSimNet, the standard is a flexible, reusable technical specification for conducting real-time air traffic management (ATM) simulations over the Internet. Building off of proven simulation and communication standards like the Department of Defense’s high-level architecture (HLA), DIS 1278.1a, and FAA and ICAO standards, AviationSimNet reduces the time and cost of fielding new capabilities.
CAASD's Storm Chasers
During the 2006 summer severe weather season, a CAASD team observed processes and procedures during significant weather events at a number of FAA air traffic control facilities and airline operations centers. The team’s task was to observe operations and discuss events with operational personnel during Severe Weather Avoidance Procedure (SWAP) events. The intent was to assess the nature and effectiveness of coordination and responses among FAA facilities and between the FAA and its customers during significant weather events.
Capstone
Capstone is an accelerated Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) effort to improve aviation safety in Alaska. The program includes the installation of ground infrastructure, global positioning satellite (GPS)-based avionics, and data link communications in commercial aircraft serving the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta/Bethel area. No state relies as heavily upon aviation as Alaska does to provide many of the bare essentials of life.
Collaborative Routing Coordination Tools
The Collaborative Routing Coordination Tools, or CRCT, is an integrated collection of automation functions to assist traffic flow management in monitoring traffic flows, developing strategies to alleviate congestion and avoid severe weather, and analyzing the impact of proposed strategies. With the CRCT analysis capabilities, the traffic manager is able to visualize the impact of a proposed strategy on sector loading or on individual aircraft, and compare the potential effects of each strategy. Eventually, the traffic manager will be able to share this information not only with traffic managers from other facilities but also with airspace users. Thus, CRCT capabilities will help facilitate collaboration among National Airspace System (NAS) stakeholders to develop strategies that are most suitable for meeting their respective operating objectives when constraints in the NAS require traffic flow management action.
Controller Pilot Data Link Communications
The current Air Traffic Control (ATC) system relies heavily on voice communications between air traffic controllers and pilots to relay control instructions and other information critical to safe and expeditious flight. These communications are required to support coordination of aircraft movement in all phases of flight, to ensure aircraft separation, transmit advisories and clearances, and to provide aviation weather services. As air travel continues to increase, controller-pilot communication has increased to the saturation point during peak traffic periods at many locations.
Developing Wake Vortex Procedures to Increase Airport Capacity
Wake vortex, the horizontal turbulence generated behind aircraft, limits airport capacity by making it necessary to space arriving and departing aircraft to keep them from encountering another aircraft’s wake. MITRE’s Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) is working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and other industry partners to increase runway capacity by developing new safety procedures to address wake vortex.
Grand Canyon Airspace
The National Parks Overflights Act of 1987 mandates the National Park Service (NPS) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provide actions for substantial restoration of natural quiet to several national parks, including in the Grand Canyon National Park. A Grand Canyon Working Group has been formed to participate in any rulemaking. This group is comprised of representatives from several stakeholders, including federal agencies, affected tribal governments, and environmental, community and aviation organizations.
OPD Prioritization Project
How do you begin prioritizing where to implement a new operational concept, from all the airports in the National Airspace System (NAS)? When considering optimized profile descent (OPD), the answer is to measure three categories of metrics and use that to rank potential implementation sites. An OPD is an arrival procedure designed to reduce fuel consumption, pollutant emissions, and noise generation during descent. The basic idea is to allow aircraft to set their engines near idle throttle while they descend, by designing the OPD as an Area Navigation (RNAV) procedure with a prescribed vertical profile near the optimum idle descent trajectories of aircraft.
Operational Evaluation 2
Hardly a day passes without the aviation community getting slammed in the media for inefficiencies, lost baggage, and the delays that have become all too commonplace for airline travelers. Over the past five years alone, airline delays have increased by 58 percent according to U. S. Department of Transportation statistics. To help turn things around, The MITRE Corporation's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) is working with a number of organizations, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), passenger and cargo airlines, advisory groups such as RTCA, and others in aviation research and development.
Performance-based Navigation Standards for the National Airspace System
To prepare for the anticipated growth and complexity in the nation’s airspace over the next decade, CAASD is working closely with the FAA and the aviation industry to develop and implement performance-based navigation procedures for the national airspace system (NAS). These new procedures—designed to increase efficiency, capacity, and safety—rely on flight deck automation to navigate with greater precision and accuracy.
Problem Analysis, Resolution and Ranking
In the future, en route controllers will be further assisted by the use of a capability called Problem Analysis, Resolution and Ranking (PARR), a URET enhancement that is currently under development at CAASD. While URET significantly improves the information and planning capabilities available to en route controllers, experience with the prototype has indicated an operational need for more advanced problem resolution capabilities; PARR addresses that need. Building upon URET's underlying functionality and computer-human interface (CHI) design, PARR generates candidate resolutions to solve various air traffic problems upon controller request. The resolutions are developed by PARR with the overarching objectives of solving problems safely, preserving user-preferred routes of flight, and rapidly and efficiently presenting results to controllers in an operationally useful manner. Because of its potential for enhancing NAS en route operations, PARR is designated as priority research by RTCA in its recommendations for advancing Free Flight.
Regional Jets and Air Traffic Control Congestion
During the past few years, regional jets have received increasing attention in the press. While RJs, as they are popularly called, have been welcomed by some observers as saviors of high-quality jet aircraft service to small communities, they have also been vilified by others as being largely responsible for the delays experienced by airline passengers throughout the past two summers.
Safe Flight 21
Safe Flight 21 is a cooperative effort between government and industry to develop enhanced capabilities for Free Flight based on evolving Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance (CNS) technologies. Safe Flight 21 will demonstrate an in-cockpit display of traffic, weather, and terrain information for pilots. The technology will also provide improved information for controllers. This program uses Global Positioning System (GPS), Automated Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), Flight Information Services-Broadcast (FIS-B), Traffic Information Service-Broadcast (TIS-B), and their integration with enhanced pilot and controller information displays. Safe Flight 21 will evaluate the safety, service, and procedure improvements these technologies make possible. The first evaluations were performed in the Ohio Valley in July 1999 and in Alaska one month later in what is called Alaska/Capstone.
Satellite Navigation
Aircraft today use many systems of navigation to get to their destination. Satellite navigation (SATNAV) systems use satellites orbiting the earth to determine an aircraft's location. One such system is called the Global Positioning System (GPS). The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is developing two augmentations for GPS that will improve the system's performance for aircraft operations. These augmentations are called the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and the Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS). GPS, WAAS, and LAAS constitute the three fundamental components of the complete SATNAV system that is to be used by civilian aircraft for the foreseeable future.
Terminal Area Route Generation, Evaluation and Traffic Simulation
CAASD has been working closely with the FAA and other parties to develop and assess various near-term terminal area procedures with the aim of improving airline service. One result of CAASD¿s work is TARGETS (or Terminal Area Route Generation, Evaluation, and Traffic Simulation), a research tool that, has been used to interactively design routes with controllers and pilots. TARGETS has also been used for route assessment, for design refinement from flight tests, and for controller familiarization with new procedures.
Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System
The Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, or TCAS, is an instrument integrated into other systems in an aircraft cockpit. It consists of hardware and software that together provide a set of electronic eyes so the pilot can "see" the traffic situation in the vicinity of the aircraft. Part of the TCAS capability is a display showing the pilot the relative positions and velocities of aircraft up to 40 miles away. The instrument sounds an alarm when it determines that another aircraft will pass too closely to the subject aircraft. TCAS provides a backup to the air traffic control system¿s regular separation processes.
Traffic Flow Management and the National Airspace System
The Air Traffic Control System Command Center sits in an unremarkable office park in Herndon, VA. The lights on the Command Center floor are dim. Large wall maps display radar weather images of the United States. On one of these, thousands of green blips¿one for every plane in the sky¿move too slowly for the eye to follow.
Traffic Management Advisor Multi-Center
The purpose of the Traffic Management Advisor Multi-Center (TMA-MC) project is to assist in planning and managing streams of arrival traffic into selected Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facilities that receive traffic from two or more en route centers. The TMA-MC is an extension of the current Traffic Management Advisor Single-Center (TMA-SC) tool into a multi-facility environment. TMA-SC is one of the capabilities introduced as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Center TRACON Automation System (CTAS) that is being implemented as part of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Free Flight Phase 1 program. The focus of TMA-MC research will be on the northeast corridor, particularly the improvement of arrival flows into Philadelphia International Airport.
User Request Evaluation Tool
The User Request Evaluation Tool, or URET, was developed at MITRE's Center for Advanced Aviation System Development (CAASD) to assist controllers with timely detection and resolution of predicted problems. By helping to manage workload and to allow more strategic planning, URET helps the system support a greater number of user-preferred flight profiles, increased user flexibility, and increased system capacity while maintaining the level of safety.
Weather Delays
Weather accounts for most of air traffic delays and cancellations in the national airspace system (NAS). However, analysis has shown that it is not necessarily the severity of weather systems that causes the most problems, but that sometimes it is their unpredictability. Good forecasts help minimize the impact of severe weather, and good planning helps mitigate the schedule disruptions that severe weather induces. However, the fundamental science of two-to-six hour forecast of convective weather is limited. Such forecasts are unlikely to get better soon. Collaboration among users and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities is the key to managing the impact of weather. The FAA's Spring/Summer 2001 program (and continuing programs in years to come) help mitigate the effects of weather on the NAS.
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