Reliable, Extensible Multimode Surveillance Expected To
Increase Safety, Efficiency In Many Challenging Applications
Industry leaders participating in the ATC Global conference in
March, agreed that multimode technology is a critical component of
"next generation" air traffic systems. In a workshop titled
"Multimode Surveillance - the Cornerstone of NextGen Surveillance",
speakers indicated that the highly reliable, easily tailorable
surveillance coverage from multilateration, including Wide Area
Multilateration (WAM), and Automatic Dependent Surveillance -
Broadcast (ADS-B), is driving safety and efficiency enhancements in
applications around the world.
Andrew Desmond-Kennedy, senior expert, Surveillance Unit,
EUROCONTROL, stated, "For Europe, we'd say that ADS-B, WAM and for
the next few years Mode S are the cornerstones of European
surveillance."
According to workshop panelists, the reliability of multimode
surveillance systems was noted as a distinct advantage of the
technology. "Over the last four years, there has been no outage [of
our wide area multilateration system at Innsbruck]," said Christian
Scheiflinger, business unit manager, Austro Control. Speaking about
the Colorado WAM system in the Rocky Mountains, Travis Vallin,
former aeronautics director, Colorado Department of Transportation
and current vice president/senior program manager, Jviation, said,
"It's been an accurate and reliable system."
Multimode surveillance is defined as cooperative and dependent
surveillance achieved through a network of fixed ground stations
with stationary antennas. The multimode sensors address mixed
avionics equipage, including Mode S, Mode A/C, and ADS-B.
Applications include airport surface surveillance, secondary
surveillance radar augmentation or replacement, high update rate
surveillance in terminal and en route airspace for enabling new
automation functions [such as Precision Runway Monitoring on
Required Navigation Performance (RNP) approaches] and other
specialized situations [Reduced Vertical Separation Minimum (RVSM)
monitoring, noise monitoring and military range monitoring].
Further, panelists noted that multimode surveillance can be
tailored to a specific area and expanded over time. "What's nice
about WAM is that it's tailored; you can tailor coverage to fit the
unique environment," said Vallin. Further, Scheiflinger said, "It's
easy to extend coverage. We saw the demand of new coverage areas
that's easy to fulfill with multilateration."
"Over the past decade, multimode surveillance techniques have
gone from laboratory curiosities to become the substrate on which
next generation surveillance is founded," said Marc Viggiano,
senior vice president of Sensis Corporation. "It's no longer a
question of 'if' but 'when' this technology will become
pervasive."
In addition to Vallin, Scheiflinger and Desmond-Kennedy,
workshop participants were: Khalid El Seed, senior ATC systems
engineer & project manager, National Air Traffic Services
(NATS); John Kefaliotis, vice president, NextGen air traffic
systems, AES Division, ITT; Sid Koslow, vice president and chief
technology officer, NAV CANADA; and Mike Gerry, vice president of
Air Traffic Systems Products and Programs, Sensis.
"The distinguished panelists were successful in raising the
understanding of multimode surveillance, the benefit to ANSPs and
the role the technology is playing in 'next generation' air traffic
systems," said Viggiano.