Trajectory prediction for future air traffic management - Complex manoeuvres and taxiing

Abstract

The future air traffic management (ATM) concept envisaged by the Single European Sky ATM Research - SESAR - and the USA equivalent NextGen, mark a paradigm shift from the current reactive approach of ATM towards holistic strategic collaborative decision making. The core of the future ATM concept relies on common situational awareness over potentially large time-horizons, based upon the user operational intent. This is beyond human capabilities and requires the support of automation tools to predict aircraft state throughout the operation and provide support to optimal decision making long before any potential conflict may arise. This is achieved with trajectory predictors and conflict detectors and resolvers respectively. Numerous tools have been developed, typically geared towards addressing specific airborne applications. However, a comprehensive literature search suggests that none of the tools was designed to predict trajectories throughout the entire operation of an aircraft, i.e. gate-to-gate. Yet, such functionality is relevant in the holistic optimisation of aircraft operations. To address this gap, this paper builds on an existing en route trajectory prediction (TP) model and develops novel techniques to predict aircraft trajectories for the transitions between the ground- and enroute-phases of operation and for the ground-phase, thereby enabling gate-to-gate (or enroute-to-enroute) TP. The model is developed on the basis of Newtonian physics and operational procedures. Real recorded data obtained from a flight data record (FDR) were used to estimate some of the input parameters required by the model. The remaining parameters were taken from the BADA 3.7 model. Performance results using these flight data demonstrate that the proposed TP model has the potential to accurately predict gate-togate trajectories and to support future ATM applications such as gate-to-gate synchronisation.