ISMAEL - Intelligent Surveillance and Management Functions for Airfield Applications Based on Low Cost Magnetic Field Detectors
Overview
Background & policy context:
Various systems have been developed for ground aircraft detection and surveillance. All these sensors have their own disadvantages.
- surface Movement Radar (SMR) systems are extremely expensive to purchase and operate (prohibitively so for many regional and smaller airports) and are subject to masking and distortion in the vicinity of airport buildings, terrain or plants;
- optical detection systems are severely degraded under adverse weather conditions, however these are precisely the conditions in which optimum surveillance is required for safety;
- airport Surface Detection Equipment (ASDE) suffers from significant problems with reflections and multi-path phenomena, and gaps in surveillance coverage;
- the newly-introduced multi-lateration systems will only work with transponder-equipped aircraft. They will not detect non co-operative vehicles or aircraft that are not equipped with such a transponder, or with a failed or malfunctioning transponder, precisely the conditions often found at regional and smaller airports. This is a potential safety hazard if they are used as the sole means of maintaining separation and control. The same applies to GPS based systems, that cannot provide the necessary reliability in terms of availability, continuity and integrity;
There was a strong demand for a new sensing technology, in particular for smaller/regional airports that need to respond to increasing demand for movement rates and commercial requirements, whilst wishing to maintain safe operation in low visibility, who cannot afford the multi-million Euro investment in a traditional Surface Movement Radar (SMR) or a fully integrated A-SMGCS.
Objectives:
The objective of this project was to determine whether recent advances in magnetic sensors could provide a better means of surface movement surveillance at airports, either as a cost-effective alternative to Surface Movement Radar for smaller airports or as an additional point sensor in multi-sensor Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control Systems (A-SMGCS) at major international airports. Therefore a new detector technology shall be developed and integrated into advanced surface movement guidance and control systems (ASMGCS). On this basis ISMAEL aims at improving existing installations of ASMGCS at large airports as well as enabling the installation of appropriate ASMGCS at small and medium airports in Europe.
Methodology:
ISMAEL had the following methodology:
- ISMAEL captured the requirements for an effective and usable system from a technical (e.g. functional, performance and safety), economic (e.g. equipment, installation and operational costs) and legal (e.g. liability, safety regulations) point of view. It is important to understand the demands for such a system and in particular the levels of performance and dependability required to support the functions that operational users require.
- ISMAEL developed appropriate hardware prototypes for magnetic field sensors and investigate the theoretical fundamentals of the physical phenomenon of magneto resistant materials. Special attention was given to model the excitation of the sensor signals due to vehicles passing the sensor and to suppress disturbing influences from environmental conditions or sources. This function can be assessed by e.g. the detection rate for all passing vehicles in the field trials. The determined parameters for the aspect of missed detection as well as false alarm were kept rather small. The later indicators will refer to the objective of safety, in order to deliver a reliable detector.
- ISMAEL developed and applied complex algorithms for the necessary data processing that are capable of detecting and identifying vehicles and providing important parameters about their motion, like velocity, direction, etc. This stage of the development embeds the sensor head into a complete detector module. Here the objective of determining the quality of speed and direction can be measured by the delivered accuracy, which will be indicated with appropriate stochastic parameters about the computed errors of these states.
- ISMAEL investigated the integration of the developed detector module into complete systems for airport applications by developing a solid concept for combining the detector with other information sources like radar and flight data etc. to explore the potential benefits of the new technology for enhancements of existing systems as well as for new systems.
- ISMAEL established how this new detector technology is able to satisfy the requirements, through practical experiments and trials in an airport environment, to assess where further work or investigation is required. This issue has to be derived from the input of experts on the topic of airport operation. The relevant objectives and indicators were defined in the assessment plan (D12).
- ISMAEL provided a socio-economic evaluation of the impacts o
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