Towards Higher-Level Services of an Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control Systems (A-SMGCS)

Abstract

The high number of runway incursions and weather dependent airport throughput occurrences has led to the development of an Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System (A-SMGCS). A-SMGCS’s basic levels 1 and 2 support tower air traffic controllers through the provision of a weather independent complete traffic situation and a basic runway safety net. Level 1 and 2 are already validated and operational at nearly 20 European airports. Instead of the higher-level services of an A-SMGCS, such as routing, departure management (DMAN), clearance conformance monitoring, data link communication (TAXI-CPDLC), and onboard guidance are not fully developed so far. The A-SMGCS manual (ICAO, 2004) describes operational, functional and performance requirements for all services but for the higher-level services they are rather immature or nonexistent. Therefore, EMMA2 (European Airport Management by A-SMGCS, part two), an Integrated Project of the 6th European framework programme, was launched in 2006. In EMMA2 a holistic A-SMGCS concept, including the higher levels, was developed. This concept describes all A-SMGCS services including detailed procedures and operational requirements. It was tested in extensive simulation and field trials at four European airports (Prague Ruzyne, Milan Malpensa, Toulouse Blagnac and Paris Charles de Gaulle), using diverse technical solutions and test platforms. The most important results and recommendations are presented in this paper.