NEWSKY - Networking the Sky for Aeronautical Communications
Overview
Background & policy context:
Within its strategic research agenda, ACARE (Advisory Council for Aeronautical Research in Europe) indicates that powerful communication is a key enabling factor for future Air-Traffic Management (ATM) development in Europe, which is required to support the expected sustainable growth of European air transport.
However, there exist bottlenecks in Air Traffic Control (ATC) and ATM communication today. Moreover, the expected ATM paradigm shift towards more strategic and tactical planning requires additional communication capabilities which are not yet available in current ATC/ATM communication systems.
Currently there are several European research initiatives underway aimed at developing improved communication technologies for aeronautical communication. These initiatives comprise ground-based, satellite-based, aircraft-to-aircraft and airport communication for all different application classes, like ATC/ATM communication, airline operational and administrative communication, and aeronautical passenger communication. However, so far there has not been an initiative aimed at integrating existing and emerging communication technologies into a global approach. NEWSKY is designed to fill this gap.
Objectives:
The main goal of NEWSKY is to integrate all of the different communication technologies and different application classes into a global heterogeneous airborne network with appropriate priority properties.
NEWSKY aims to bring about improved communication capabilities and assists the expected ATM paradigm shift. Real air-ground integration has been achieved with NEWSKY and the information sharing concepts of collaborative decision-making (CDM) and System-Wide Information Management (SWIM) have been made available to the aircraft. As a consequence, the NEWSKY approach assists the realisation of the Single European Sky concept and helps to create a future European ATM system which is viable well beyond 2020.
Methodology:
NEWSKY will make possible, by 2020 and beyond, an innovative ATM network-enabled vision for which there already is an urgent need. Increases in current air-traffic movements and forecasts for the next 10 to 20 years reinforce the vital requirement for a fresh ATM perspective: an ATM transformation philosophy which includes new networking concepts, new ATM elements and new ATM operational concepts.
The 'networking the sky' concept of NEWSKY does not aim to develop new link technologies. Instead NEWSKY aims to develop an innovative networking concept to integrate different existing and emerging link technologies into a single, global ATM network for a secure, seamless and robustly redundant ATM system, which is also scalable to cope with future long-term increasing demands.
To achieve this objective, NEWSKY started by defining the requirements of this approach without restricting its view to current constraints. Secondly, an understanding of ATM particularities and constraints has been be developed, in order to define in a feasible way the network transformation required by NEWSKY, and how to implement it efficiently and on time.
Co-operation opportunities with related projects and initiatives have been identified and interactions have been defined to achieve synergy for future ATM research. Relevant initiatives and projects include SES initiative, SESAR, CASCADE, Nex-SAT, ATENAA, and B-VHF.
The NEWSKY objectives do not compete with other ATM initiatives; rather NEWSKY aims to mutually benefit from other related activities by efficiently disseminating and exchanging achievements from both sides.
Once the framework to enable ATM network transformation had been agreed on, the basic NEWSKY architecture was defined. Next, innovative networking concepts were developed, assessed, tested and validated by means of software simulations and limited laboratory trials.
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