Publications

The Runway Status Light System (RSLS), developed under the FAA's Airport Surface Traffic Automation (ASTA) program, is intended to help reduce the incidence of runway incursions and airport surface accidents. It will do so by providing a preventive, back-up system of automatically controlled lights on the airport surface that inform pilots when runways are unsafe for entry or takeoff, and by providing controllers with enhanced surface radar displays. This report documents a proof-of-concept evaluation of the RSLS at Boston's Logan Airport. It details the methods used to provide the necessary surface surveillance and safety logic to allow a computer to operate the runway status lights and associated controller displays without human assistance. The system was installed and tested off-line at Boston's Logan Airport using an inexpensive commercial marine radar as a primary surveillance source. The system operated live and in real time but the runway status lights were not physically installed. They were displayed on a scale model of Logan Airport located in a demonstration room that had a good view of the airport. This allowed visual comparison between the actual aircraft and the resulting lights and displays. In addition to providing a convincing demonstration of the system, real-timing viewing of the aircraft movement was an important aid in the development of the surveillance processing and safety logic software. Surveillance performance and runway status light operational performance were evaluated quantitatively. The probability of tracking an aircraft in movement areas with line-of-sight coverage was better than 98%. The false track rate was about four per hour, and the surveillance jitter was about 1 meter rms. From an operational point of view, had there been real lights on the field, it appears that they would have provided the intended safety back-up with little impact on airport capacity or controller and pilot workload, Only once in 15 minutes would the pilot population have observed a light in an incorrect state for more than four seconds. From the point of view of a specific cockpit crew, only once in 36 operations would a runway status light have been seen in an incorrect state for more than four seconds, and, furthermore, only once in 50 operations would light illuminations have interfered with normal, safe traffic flow. These are encouraging results for a system in an early demonstration phase because significant improvement is possible in all of these performance measures. Specific suggestions for improvement are included in this document.

The Airborne Measurement Facility (AMF) is a data collection system that receives and records pulse and other information on the 1030/1090-MHz frequencies used by the FAA's secondary surveillance radar and collision avoidance systems. These systems include the Air Traffic Control Radar Beacon System (ATCRBS), the Mode Select (Mode S) Beacon System, and the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS). Designed and constructed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory in the 1970s, this unique measurement tool has been used to conduct advanced research in beacon-based air traffic control (ATC) over the past 20 years. The original AMF included a recorder capable of recording at the maximum rate of 2 Mbits/sec. Although this recording system worked well, it had become difficult to maintain in recent years. In 1993, the Air Traffic Surveillance Group, with support from the FAA, decided to incorporate the latest tape recording technology into an enhanced AMF recording system. The main purpose of this report is to provide guidance to analysts for AMF operation and data analysis. Finally, this report complements an AMF User's Manual, which is a more detailed document for using and maintaining the AMF.

This paper describes an experimental system for cockpit display of Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR) wind shear warnings. The TDWR is a ground-based system for detecting wind shear hazards that pose a threat to aviation, During the Summer of 1990, wind shear warnings generated by the Lincoln-operated TDWR testbed radar at Orlando, Florida were transmitted in real-time to a research aircraft performing microburst penetrations. This test marks a milestone as being the first time that TDWR wind shear warnings were successfully transmitted and displayed in an aircraft in real-time. This effort was supported by NASA Langley Research Center as part of a program to investigate techniques for integrating airborne and ground-based wind shear information for aircrew alerting. The three main goals for 1990 were 1) to conduct microburst penetrations with an instrumented aircraft, 2) to compare a hazard estimate called the F factor (Bowles, 1990) for airborne and TDWR data, and 3) demonstrate real-time data link and cockpit display of TDWR warnings. All three of these goals were successfully carried out. The research aircraft, a Cessna Citation II operated by the University of North Dakota (UND) Center for Aerospace Sciences conducted over 80 microburst penetrations in Orlando over a six week period with TDWR testbed radar surveillance. Initial post-processing analysis in comparing the aircraft and TDWR F factors has begun. The cockpit display system was operated during the latter part of the flight test period, and proved useful in aiding the Citation crew in locating microburst and gust front events. There were three main objectives in the development of the cockpit display system. First, the real-time display was intended to aid the Citation crew in locating microburst and gust front events. This capability was desired both to aid the crew in locating events to penetrate, and to improve safety by providing a better information about the location of the wind shear events. A second objective was to demonstrate the feasibility of transmitting TDWR wind shear warnings to aircraft in real-time. This demonstration is an important element in the eventual development of an integrated aircrew alerting procedure incorporating both airborne and ground-based wind shear information. This study marks the first successful demonstration of real-time transmission of TDWR wind-shear warnings to an aircraft in flight. A third objective was to demonstrate the desirability of transmitting TDWR wind shear warnings to aircraft in real-time. Currently, the TDWR provides these warnings to controllers as textual messages, which are then relayed to pilots via voice communications. The TDWR also includes graphical displays of wind shear and precipitation products but these are only provided currently to the Tower and TRACON supervisors. A potential use of Mod S Data Link (or other ground-to-air data link systems) is to provide TDWR wind shear warnings directly to pilots, Automatic delivery of TDWR wind shear warnings potentially result in decreased controller workload and improved pilot information. Mode S Data Link is currently planned to provide textual wind shear warnings only. However, studies by Wanke and Hansman (1990) show that pilots substantially prefer graphical presentation of wind shear warnings over textual presentation. The paper will first describe the organization of the system, including the process of generating the display messages in the TDWR testbed and data linking them to the aircraft. Second, the display format and operation of the cockpit display will be described. Next, an example of the operational use of the cockpit display will be presented, along with initial F factor results. Finally, the paper will conclude with a summary and plans for future work.