Tube network and dynamic sectorization of airspace for next generation air transportation system (NextGen)
Abstract
The skies over the US are becoming more crowded every day. The current airspace system is under growing strain as the demand for air travel is steadily increasing, from over 740 million passengers flying in fiscal year 2006 to an estimated 1 billion passengers by 2015, according to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates. The current national airspace structure consisting of ARTCCs, sectors, etc has been defined several decades ago and fails to deliver optimum results in the current-day heavy and concentrated traffic scenario. There may be many ways to optimize the current structure but there is always the need of finding a new structure which would serve not only the current air traffic requirements but also the expected 3 fold increase in air traffic as predicted by the FAA by 2025. The NextGen will thus capitalize on human and automation capabilities to increase airspace capacity, improve aviation safety, and enhance operational efficiency. This capitalization will be based on building processes and systems that help humans do what they do best; choose alternatives and make decisions; and help automation functions accomplish what they do best; acquire, compile, monitor, evaluate, and exchange information. Tube networks have been studied here as a possible way to re-define the air routes structure taking into consideration the current air traffic scenario and future capabilites of aircraft to maintain autonomous separation. An optimum number of tubes required have been derived using the point to point operations data for the top 500 airports in the National Airspace System (NAS). An efficient sectorization algorithm for balanced distribution of air traffic is discussed. Validation of the algorithm is to be carried out using real air traffic data over the Oakland center, the extraction of which has been discussed.
Degree
M.S.E.
Advisors
Hwang, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Aerospace engineering
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