A New Approach to an Automated Air Traffic Control

This paper identifies areas of improvements of the air traffic control system and proposes modification of the concept of automation by using available technologies. With the proposed modification, the current Europe wide en route network structure can be modified in order to make routes more optimal. For this new route network structure, a new concept of automation will be used to manage with the air traffic. The first identified area of improvement is implementation of automation process that will enable decentralization of the air traffic control functionality to each individual aircraft and this will be achieved through automated routing of the aircrafts and CD＆R （conflict detection and resolution）. The FMS （flight management system） at the aircraft will make decisions for the optimal flight route based on the sensor inputs, information on selection of the routes, next hope points and flight levels, all received by ADS-B （automatic dependant surveillance-broadcast）. The second area is processing the information about the deviation from the optimal route as in flight plan due to a traffic management （vectoring, level change） and taking it into consideration when further actions are undertaken. For each action, a cost factor will be calculated from the fuel burned for that action. This factor will be used to select conflict resolution protocol. The proposed concept shall increase the capacity of the network, and enable the air traff~c more efficient and more environmentally friendly while maintaining safe separation.