Latest revision as of 16:33, 3 February 2021

Abstract

The objective of this air traffic management study was to analyse the trade-off between time spacing accuracy and corresponding control effort in a potential future application of airborne separation assistance systems (ASAS). The ASAS application airborne spacing sequencing and merging was simulated in fast-time. Lead aircraft speed profiles were generated using complete descent profiles from real-time experiments. For validation purposes, three metrics were derived from real-time experiments: time spacing error (accuracy), frequency of speed adjustments (control activity), and cumulative airspeed variations (control cost). Four experimental parameters were varied: automatic and manual speed control, spacing dead-zone, guidance law dynamics time constant and initial time spacing error. A trade-off between the metrics was found for a sequence of two aircraft by comparing their variation with the experimental parameters. Corresponding ‘minimum’ performance requirements for the metrics are proposed: (i) time spacing error - mean less than 1.5s with 0.5 to 85% of the values between -4 and +4s (automatic mode), and mean less than 2.5s with 0.5 to 85% of the values between -6 and +6s (manual mode), (ii) frequency of speed adjustments - mean less than 1 action per minute (manual mode) and (iii) cumulative airspeed variations - mean less than 10 knots (automatic and manual modes). These requirements form a basis for investigating sequences longer than two aircraft where chain propagation effects may lead to additional constraints.

Original document

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6595/7ae358f0486bdf4237834c4bb39eaf4bc81c.pdf

• http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2006-7784,

http://dx.doi.org/10.2514/6.2006-7784

• https://www.eurocontrol.int/eec/gallery/content/public/document/eec/conference/paper/2006/017_Spacing_accuracy_sensitivity_analysis.pdf,

https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2006-7784,

https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2109116291