High Performance Conflict Detection and Resolution for Multi-Dimensional Objects

Alex­an­der Kuenz, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt 

4D-tra­jec­to­ry based ope­ra­ti­ons is one of the big enabler for fu- ture high-ca­pa­ci­ty, ef­fi­ci­ent and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly fri­end­ly air traf­fic ma­nage­ment. Every air­craft is sche­du­led to fly along a pre­dic­ted 4D path that can be cal­cu­la­ted from gate to gate pre-flight. 4D- tra­jec­to­ries are op­ti­mi­zed in­di­vi­dual­ly for air­craft ta­king into ac- count per­for­mance mo­dels, rou­tes, wea­ther con­di­ti­ons and air­line pre­fe­ren­ces. Howe­ver, in­di­vi­du­al cal­cu­la­ti­on of tra­jec­to­ries does not en­su­re con­flict-freen­ess with sur­roun­ding traf­fic. This work de­scri­bes an ef­fi­ci­ent al­go­rithm de­tec­ting con­flicts for large traf­fic sce­na­ri­os. Con­flict de­tec­tion is per­for­med bet­ween air­craft tra­jec­to- ries, also ta­king into ac­count en­vi­ron­men­tal cons­traints like se­ve­re wea­ther zones and re­stric­ted areas. Basic idea is an N-di­men­sio­nal bi­sec­tion of air­space al­lo­wing a si­gni­fi­cant re­duc­tion of com­ple­xi­ty. Thus, po­ten­ti­al con­flicts are iden­ti­fied very fast. A slo­wer high pre­ci­si­on con­flict check is per­for­med on po­ten­ti­al con­flicts only. On aver­age, con­flicts of one 4D-tra­jec­to­ry can be de­tec­ted in a Eu­ro­pean traf­fic samp­le hol­ding more than 33000 flights in less than 2.5 ms on stan­dard PC hard­ware.

Fast de­tec­tion times are pre­des­ti­ned for tri­al-and-er­ror con­flict re­so­lu­ti­on. Dif­fe­rent con­flict re­so­lu­ti­on me­thods are il­lus­tra­ted, ta­king into ac­count the major key per­for­mance areas in air traf- fic ma­nage­ment, e. g., safe­ty, ef­fi­ci­en­cy, and pre­dic­ta­bi­li­ty. As an ex­amp­le, de­con­flic­tion is per­for­med on an op­ti­mi­zed ver­si­on of afo­re­men­tio­ned Eu­ro­pean traf­fic samp­le hol­ding 33 000 flights. 

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