Air Traffic Control Sector Merging and Filtering
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current air traffic control systems face challenges in maximizing aircraft throughput and handling capacity while maintaining safety, as human controllers struggle to monitor and manage a large number of aircraft, leading to potential inefficiencies and increased workload.
Innovation Solution
A computerized air traffic control system that allows flexible deployment of controllers by grouping adjacent sectors into larger super-sectors, enabling a single planning controller to manage multiple tactical sectors, with the use of trajectory prediction and medium-term conflict detection programs to filter and route relevant aircraft interactions to appropriate tactical controllers, reducing the information overload and enabling more efficient control.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If human controllers monitor and manage aircraft in each sector individually, then safety and separation standards are maintained, but the number of controllers required increases and throughput is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple adjacent tactical sectors into a single planning sector, allowing one planning controller to manage aircraft across sector boundaries while tactical controllers handle local control. This merging enables better resource utilization and increases throughput without compromising safety, as the planning controller coordinates aircraft movements across the combined sector area.
Solution Approach 2:
The planning controller acts as an intermediary between multiple tactical controllers and aircraft, coordinating aircraft movements across sector boundaries. This intermediary role allows tactical controllers to focus on local control while the planning controller manages broader coordination, thereby increasing overall system throughput without reducing safety standards.
2Adaptability or versatility
If tactical controllers are provided with all information on aircraft in multiple sectors, then they can manage aircraft across sectors, but information overload occurs
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments information presentation by showing full details only for aircraft within the controller's own tactical sector, while providing summary or filtered information for aircraft in other sectors. This segmentation prevents information overload while enabling flexible cross-sector management, as controllers receive comprehensive data only when necessary for their immediate control responsibilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The system provides different information quality levels to tactical controllers based on their specific needs: detailed real-time information for aircraft in their own sector, and summarized or less frequent information for aircraft in other sectors. This local quality approach ensures controllers have sufficient information for flexible deployment without experiencing information overload.
3Device complexity
If the number of planning controllers is reduced, then cost and complexity are decreased, but the workload on remaining controllers increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a temporal dimension to controller workload by allowing planning controllers to manage aircraft over extended time horizons across multiple sectors, rather than being constrained to immediate local control. This dimensional change enables fewer planning controllers to handle larger volumes of aircraft by distributing workload across time and space, reducing overall system complexity without excessively increasing individual workload.
Data Source
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AI summary
An air traffic control system in which several tactical sectors each control of a respective tactical controller can be amalgamated into a single super-sector under control of a single planning controller. The tactical controllers can collaboratively manage flights in neighbouring tactical sectors within the same planning sector and have awareness of selected flights and interactions outside their own tactical sector; the invention assesses and selects which flights to display for each controller (based upon separation responsibility).