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PHARE Demonstration 3 CENA (Centre d'Études de la Navigation Aérienne) |
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The CENA PHARE Demonstration 3 work took place in Athis-Mons, France involving 27 controllers from various countries (USA, Romania, Germany, France).
It was performed in an operational environment gathering a TMA/departure sector including Paris CDG Airport, an Extended TMA/departure sector and an en-route sector, thereby covering areas left unexplored by previous PHARE Demonstrations.
It evaluated a future ATM concepts including air-ground integration, advanced tools to support the controllers and a transitional introduction of 4D Flight Management System and data-link equipped aircraft. The aim was to explore the effectiveness of concepts in an environment where the man stays in the process of decision-making, so following a “human centred approach”.
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| The CENA PHARE Demonstration 3 facility (Click for a larger image) | |
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The CENA evaluations included a successful airborne demonstration with the DERA BAC1-11 live aircraft equipped with an Extended FMS. It showed the ability of an aircraft to establish an air/ground connection through the PATN network using the INMARSAT satellite. It used data-link before take-off, and during the flight used the EFMS capabilities to manage 4-dimensional routes and carry out 4D trajectory negotiation with the ground systems.
The CENA PHARE Demonstration 3 training programme met its objectives. The controllers fully understood the underlying concepts of PHARE Demonstration 3, and were able to participate intelligently in discussions about the system. It proved necessary to have, in addition to the instructors, technical experts who were capable of answering controllers’ operational and technical questions. As always, for some controllers more training and familiarisation with the simulated airspace (traffic flows and rules) would have been profitable.
Controllers generally accepted the PHARE Demonstration 3 concepts well, but emphasised that system performance problems (resulting in long response times) prevented them from fully evaluating the novel concepts and procedures that were proposed.
Concerning increase in airspace capacity, which was the main interest of the overall PHARE programme, results were mixed because the introduction of the computer assistance tools induced a direct increase in workload, especially at Planning Controller positions. Controllers agreed that both advanced procedures and introduction of datalink equipped aircraft fitted well with Planning Controller activities, and felt that optimising traffic and managing conflicts in advance could be useful. However, they expressed concern about the difficulties that Tactical Controllers encountered in handling non-equipped aircraft, and expressed a feeling of being powerless when monitoring the data-link equipped aircraft (they reported difficulties to mentally integrate these aircraft into the overall traffic, which they called “losing the picture”).
For the Tactical Controller, time spared from VHF communications was generally well appreciated when the proportion of data-link aircraft reached a significant level (70 %). A common issue for both Planning Controller and Tactical Controller was the clear division of responsibilities between them that led to a real lack of co-operation. This phenomenon was called the ‘operational gap’. As in PHARE Demonstration 1, there was little evidence of a measurable change in airspace capacity. Objective measures of minimum safe separation infringements provided issues of real interest: whereas computer assistance and a significant level of equipped aircraft bring some improvement in traffic throughput, this also resulted in an increase in either the number of infringements or their duration. Controller comments suggested that the fact that the Tactical Controller could lose the mental picture of the traffic could sometimes
jeopardise safety.
Analysis of quality of service results remains difficult. Some small improvement in traffic throughput was observed. However, this is only valid for the simulated departure to en-route phase and should rather be evaluated in a complete simulation of an entire route from departure to destination.
The principle of computer assistance was well received by the controller: in particular the inclusion of tools like Co-operative Tools and Highly Interactive Problem Solver on the en-route Planning Controller position offered a powerful evaluation environment. On the departure position, the first acquaintance of controllers with a departure manager created great interest, with some controllers requesting an in-depth evaluation of this tool in a more realistic, present-day environment.
Recommendations for future ATM projects using PHARE concepts are that they should:
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- explore ways to simplify air-ground trajectory negotiation and propose at sector level, procedures which take account of time pressures (could be derived from CPDLC or formalised clearance methods);
- explore ways to define a new controller role for multi-sector planning capable of efficiently using air-ground trajectory negotiation for rerouting and simplifying the traffic;
- work to obtain system response times as short as possible, a reliable overall system as well as logical and clear system responses;
- limit automation to elements that can be trusted by controllers, and provide co-operative system functions allowing the controller to remain master of the system;
- study new concepts and future systems taking into account significant non nominal events.
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More general recommendations for continuation of research by means of large scale ATC experiments are that they should:
- benefit from the techniques used in the preparation of this experiment to teach controller trainees futuristic concepts;
- adopt similar evaluation strategies mixing qualitative and quantitative observations and refine workload, security and capacity analysis techniques;
- develop a more detailed set of quality of service measurements and tools.
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Last validation: 20/03/2007
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