Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T05:58:24.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

System Problems in Air Traffic Control

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1976

S. Ratcliffe
S. Ratcliffe
Affiliation:
(Royal Signals and Radar Establishment)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Air Traffic Control is part of the process by which aircraft ‘go about their ways’ and thus can fairly be regarded as a branch of navigation. Because of the existence of centralised control organizations, and because much of the total flight time is spent in the vicinity of system ‘hubs’, air traffic interacts with itself in very complex ways. For this reason the traffic as a whole behaves in a manner that could not easily be predicted from an inspection of the system elements. Thus there can be said to be a ‘system’ problem, where by a system is meant, not the specific hardware but the abstract elements which determine the essential overall performance. These abstractions would, for example, be common to a computer simulation of an ATC system and to its real-life counterpart. The present paper will attempt to discuss, at this ‘system’ level of abstraction, the problems facing air traffic control and the principles on which the system design should be based.

Type
‘Two Centuries of Navigation’
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1976 , pp. 372 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

1von Bertalanffy, L. (1950). The theory of open systems in physics and biology. Science, 3, 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2Fisher, R. A. (1930). Cenetical theory of natural selection. Clarendon Press, p. 41.Google Scholar
3Chilver, H. (1975). Wider implications of catastrophy theory. Nature, 254, 381.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4Lloyd, D. E. (1971). Mathematical studies on separation standards. This Journal, 24, 456.Google Scholar
5Hemesath, N. B. and Bruckner, J. M. H. (1974). Area navigation and terminal area traffic control. Navigation (USA), 21, 258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6Benoit, A., Storey, J. and Swierstra, S. (1975). ‘The introduction of accurate aircraft trajectory predictions in ATC, AGARD Conference, Cambridge, Mass.Google Scholar
7Noe, J. D. and Nutt, G. J. (1973). Macro E-Nets for representation of parallel systems. IEEE Transactions on Computers, C-22, No. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8Ratcliffe, S. and Gent, H. (1974). The quantitative description of a traffic control process. This Journal, 27, 317.Google Scholar