Air Traffic Controllers Can Now Pinpoint Location Of
Flights
NATS Services is now using Sensis Corporation's Wide Area
Multilateration (WAM) system in the North Sea off the coast of
Scotland for helicopter flight following. Air traffic controllers
are using the WAM surveillance information as a supplement to
established procedural flight rules until the WAM system completes
testing and regulatory approval for flight information services
later this year.
There are more than 25,000 helicopter flights carrying a half
million passengers each year between Aberdeen Airport and the oil
and gas operations in the North Sea. Low-level radar coverage only
extends 80 miles off the shore, forcing controllers to rely on
pilot's positional radio updates provided every 10 minutes. In
addition, established in-bound and out-bound flight paths are, in
many cases, not the most efficient routes due to the lack of
surveillance. To improve safety and efficiency, NATS Services
required a solution that provided high accuracy surveillance that
was compatible with future technologies such as Automatic Dependent
Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B). NATS Services selected Sensis WAM
to cover 25,000 square miles of the North Sea with multilateration
sensors placed on 16 oil platforms. One of the platforms is
floating, making the development of the solution more
challenging.
"Flight safety in the North Sea is of the highest importance to
NATS Services and, to enhance it further we needed a proven
surveillance solution," said John Mayhew, NATS Services' General
Manager at Aberdeen. "With Sensis WAM, controllers have radar-like
surveillance to accurately monitor and identify helicopters, in
many cases all the way to the flight deck on the oil platform."
Sensis WAM uses multiple low-maintenance, non-rotating sensors
to triangulate aircraft and helicopter locations based on
transponder signals to provide air traffic controllers with precise
aircraft position and identification information regardless of
weather conditions. With a higher update rate and greater
positional accuracy than traditional radar, Sensis multilateration
provides effective surveillance for increased safety, capacity and
efficiency of airspace. With its advanced processing techniques, a
Sensis multilateration system uses the minimal number of sensors
for a less complex, lower lifecycle cost solution. Additionally,
each multilateration sensor deployed by Sensis supports ADS-B.
"Sensis WAM addresses NATS Services' need for a highly accurate,
reliable surveillance system that has the flexibility to use ADS-B,
Mode S or Mode A/C signals," said John Jarrell, vice president and
general manager of Sensis Air Traffic Systems. "In addition, the
robust system has the ability to process data from fixed and
non-fixed sensors - which is important as one of the platforms
experiences positional changes of up to 100 meters."
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