Analysis of Climb Trajectory Modeling for Separation Assurance Automation

Abstract

Climb prediction uncertainty is a major source of error in trajectory-based automation for air traffic management. In this study, the performance of a trajectory-based automated separation assurance system is analyzed under different levels of uncertainty in laboratory simulations to investigate its robustness to climb uncertainty. Results indicate that this fully automated system can successfully detect and resolve 99% of conflicts in the high-altitude sectors of Fort Worth Center during 3-20 minutes prior to first loss of separation under near-zero uncertainty. Trajectory uncertainty was then incorporated into the simulation in the form of weight uncertainty. System performance remained unchanged for these scenarios when weight uncertainties ranged ± 10%. However, performance declined to 87% when this range was expanded to ± 20%.

Original document

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

• http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e930/737e21556f722c534af1ff8893d8ea0206f7.pdf

• http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2008-7407,

http://dx.doi.org/10.2514/6.2008-7407

• https://www.aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/publications/strategic/Thipphavong_GNC_2008.pdf,

https://academic.microsoft.com/#/detail/2052488185