SINTEZ ATC automation system

VNIIRA is the long-standing developer of the automated air traffic control systems. The first native ATC AS «START» was developed in 1975 and included SSR and PSR data processing and initial flight data elements.

In 1986, the second generation of ATC AS SPECTR was developed, in which not only the radar data processing was automated, but also the full flight data processing, as well as the calculation of spatiotemporal (4D) trajectories and the air situation analysis for conflict-free environment (STCA, MSAW).

In the ninetieths and early 2000th years, the unified series of ATC AS "SINTEZ” was created, implementing the state-of-the-art level of automation satisfying the EUROCONTROL recommendations and providing the strip-less ATC technology.

The level of the technical facilities used and the functional tasks solved from VNIIRA corresponds to the level of the leading global manufacturers of ATC AS and considerably surpasses all the domestic counterparts.

Over than 40 ATC centers are currently equipped with the unified series of the ATC AS SINTEZ facilities in Russia and abroad. The ATC AS “Sintez” of the last generation has no analog, as 10 unique functions implemented in this system are not provided completely in any ATC AS system of Europe.

Since 2009 VNIIRA has operated as a solution provider of design and survey, construction and erection works, a supplier of own design equipment for the modernization of more than 20 ATC area and terminal and air nodal points in Russia in the cities of Sochi, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok and others. These works are carried out in accordance with the Federal Target Program "Modernization of unified Air Traffic Management System of the Russian Federation (2009–2015)".

Purpose:

Receiving, processing and display of air situation
Receiving, processing, storage, display and distribution of planned information
Receiving, processing and display of meteorological information
Automatic analysis and information display of current and established air situation on conflict-free
Automatic detection of “middle-term” conflicts between aircrafts
Detection of discrepancies and reminder output
Display of current and established air situation, flight plans, meteorological information, restrictions for air flights and reference data.
Separation provision RVSM
Interaction with adjacent ATC AS as per standard OLDI
Management and system performance activity including monitoring of data information sources and transfer channels
Recording and replay of system processed information
Stand-by processing and surveillance information display
Training of ATC controllers

Additional functional capabilities

Safety Net – safety monitoring subsystem consisting of:

STCA (Short Term Conflict Alert) – a short-term conflict warning (up to 2 minutes);
APW (Area Proximity Warning) – ATC AS function, providing approaching detection in the interval of 1 to 2 minutes (and penetration) for AC getting into airspace where flight can’t be carried out and transmission of the respective warning to a controller;
MSAW (Minimum Safe Altitude Warning) – a function providing the detection of AC descent below the minimum safe flight level (altitude) and transmission of the respective warning to a controller;
APM (Approach Path Monitor) – safety monitoring during AC final approach (in aerodrome ATC AS).

TP (Trajectory Prediction) – calculation of the future progress of individual AC on the basis of the current flight state, environmental conditions, AC characteristics, and radar data of AC movement as well as controller clearance.

MTCD (Medium-Term Conflict Detection) - medium-term detection of potential conflict situations at the prediction horizon from 0 to 20–60 min.

TCT (Tactical Controller Tool) - Tactical Controller’s Tools. They render assistance for a tactical controller in providing separation at the prediction horizon up to 8 minutes.

MONA (Monitoring Aids) – flight conformance monitoring and reminders – software tools, additional tools to trajectory prediction that help a controller in monitoring all traffic under control.

CORA (Conflict resolution assistant) – decision support in conflict resolution or in estimation of the pilot’s requests.

SYSCO (System Supported Co-ordination) – AC traffic coordination, interaction between adjacent ATC units (for example, by means of the OLDI protocol).

CPDLC (Controller Pilot Data Link Communications) – data exchange between a controller and pilot using thee ATC HMI and the digital data transfer channel. It provides automated interaction between crew and controller.

AMAN Arrival Manager (Arrival Manager). It is intended for the sequence of runway use by arriving aircrafts considering departing aircrafts.

DMAN Departure Manager (Departure manager). The DMAN function is intended for the sequence of runway use by departing aircrafts considering arriving aircrafts and organization of movement on the aerodrome.

ADS-B 1090 ES

Surveillance Data processing:

Receiving and checking of radar data from any radar complexes (up to 32), data from ADS-B,
Tracking and integration of surveillance data from many sources including ADS-B and WAM (Wide Area Multilateration),
correlation with the flight plan information,
ADF data receiving and processing (ADF)
channel of direct access to radar data (“by-pass”) including the flight plan information elements

Flight data processing:

Data reception from AS IFPS, flight plan database storage and maintenance,
Processing, distribution and forwarding of planned information,
Calculation of spatiotemporal trajectories and prediction of air situation,
Correction of spatiotemporal trajectories according to radar data,
Assignment of SSR codes,
Silent cross-sectoral coordination and radar transfer of control,
Coordination with interfacing centers by the Eurocontrol standard-OLDI (SYSCO),
Capability of RPL storage, AFTN message reception, and preliminary (daily) planning,
Data acquisition for calculation of air navigation services charges,
Traffic load monitoring over defined sectors and other aeronautical elements in defined intervals,
Recording and issuance of statistical data on the use of airspace.

Analysis of Current and Predicted Air Situation for Absence of Conflicts and Conformity with Flight Plans:

Medium-term potentially conflict situations (with look-ahead time of 2-60 minutes) on the basis of 4D trajectory prediction (MTCD);
calculation and displaying of probable medium-term conflicts to a controller,
display of conflicting ACs and context ACs restricting maneuvering in the case of the conflict resolution implementation,
displaying of the air situation upright projection (Vertical Aid Window),
airspace use monitoring considering RVSM
prediction and achievement of the boundary values of the separation norms (SSA)
short-term potentially hazardous close proximity (STCA)
descent below the safe altitude (MSAW)
potentially conflict situations with the airspace restrictions and hazardous weather phenomena (APW)
flight plan routes deviation, non-observance of the preset flight separation level and reminder (MONA) and others;
final approach safety monitoring,
decision support in the conflict resolution in the vertical and horizontal planes;
function ‘what if”

Processing of meteorological data

Processing of meteorological data, graphical and textual displaying (combined with the air situation displaying)
- Actual weather on RWY
- Hazardous weather phenomena
- Weather and aerodrome and flight route forecasts (METAR, SPACI, TAF, SIGMET)
- constant-level balloon tracks
reception of meteorological data from the Meteoserver ADS

Displaying of the following Information on Integrated Air situation and flight plan data displays (IAS and PD):

current air situation on the basis of multi-radar processing, including mapping, radar, bearing and meteorological data, information of ADS-Band and WAM, temporary airspace restrictions and hazardous weather phenomena,
plan data structured in the form of planning lists and individual flight plans,
windows of potentially conflict situations (PCS/PPD)
attributes of PCS, information for their avoidance and plan deviations,
various warnings and reminders
short-term prediction on radar state vectors extrapolation in terms of distance/minitues (both for all AC and individually)
medium-term conflict prediction in graphical and alphabetic-numeric form:
- planning lists and sector inbound lists
- PCS window (PPD)
- Controller help window in the vertical plane (VAW)
- Predictable air situation (routes according to the plan)
- Selected and enhanced labels (ELW) with the information of compulsory reporting points (CRP) flyover
- Traffic load monitor
Data on interaction with adjacent ATC AS by the standard OLDI protocol (SYSCO)
Pseudoradar displaying of air situation information in the absence of radar data (track by plan)
Information on the status of navigation and landing aids
Air situation by sectors, current and anticipated traffic load (at the Area/Approach supervisor working position).

Human-computer interface

Complies with the EUROCONTROL recommendations (Eatchip Phase III HMI Catalogue) etc.
Provides a stripless environment for ATC controllers operations
Provides the combined display of air situation, sector planning, meteorological and reference data
The graphical user-friendly HMI on the basis of the window technology minimizes a load on ATC controllers and provides:
- Displaying of minimum information required to a controller at the moment
- Easy access to additional information
- Lay-out of aircraft labels (ALs) depending on the A/C heading for reducing the number of Als overlapping
- Automatic and manual anti label overlap settings
- Matching of the AC label color to the flight status
- Use of standard, selected and enhanced AC labels
- A graphic representation of the predicted air situation (speed vector, flight planned route)
- Integral graphic representation of potential conflict situations (PCS) in special windows (PPD, VAW)
- Efficient graphic representation of information on particular short-term and medium-term PCSs (STCA, MTCD)
- Information input via the parameter menu by aids of direct addressing to the respective elements

Recording and replay

Continuous recording of information and controller’s actions processed by the system,
Storage of recorded information for the preset period of time,
Active or passive reproduction in real or accelerated time at any prescribed working position,
Synchronous replay with voice data,
Statistics on the airspace use and aircraft violations of the predefined separation limits

Technical monitoring and control

Continuous monitoring of performance of all system components including all sources of information
Window-based graphical interface of a system supervisor
Automatic and manual reconfiguration
Acquisition and display of information on the status of navigation and landing aids
Recording of system events and shift engineer’s actions,
Documentary and graphic representation of archive information for the following analysis
On-line testing of all system components.

Training of ATC controllers

Integrated or autonomous training simulator carrying out all system functions
Simulation of the air situation controlled by pseudo-pilots on the basis of flight plans or combination of real and simulated air situation (AS)
Air situation simulation in the real or fast time scales
Autonomous sector-wise exercises with the simulation of interaction with adjacent sectors and system-wide exercises
Recording and reproduction of exercises synchronously with voice data
Simulation of the visual ground situation (using the 3D graphics) for training controllers of runway and taxiing operations

External interfaces

The Eurocontrol standard Asterix for the radar complex, the library of CIS protocols and any customer’s protocols
Automatic direction finders (ADF)
AFTN for messages on flight plans and METEO messages (METAR, SPECI, TAF, SIGMET)
IFPS AS (IFPS)
Meteoserver ADS: AWOS (AWOS), automated MPR, AFTN and automated document printing system of the state committee on hydrometeorology and natural environment monitoring (Goscomhydromet)
Interfacing ATC AS (OLDI)
Extensibility of mode S, ADS-B, CPDLC and ADS-C by SSR
Interfacing with satellite – based data links

Basic system solutions

Conformance to the standards and recommendations of the world aviation community: ICAO and EUROCONTROL (COPS/CWP, documents of programs EATCHIP (REFGHMI, CATALOGUE, EGD, FASTI, SESAR)
System-level SW providing the architecture openness and the system extensibility:
- UNIX OS(Solaris)
- Protocols of LAN (LAN) ETHERNET TCP/IP, SNMP
- Graphic package X-Windows X11-R6, Qt
- MySQL database
Conformance of the HMI to the EUROCONTROL recommendations: document EATCHIP PHASE III HMI CATALOGUE etc.
Standard advanced computer aids (COTS): work stations and servers from the leading manufacturers (Oracle, Sun, HP)
Standard state-of-the-art display facilities: LCD monitors 28” (2048x2048), 30” (2560x1600) and 24” (1920x1200)
The ATC sectors consist of two independent Controller working positions in the suite providing both separate performance of the RC and TC roles and combined by one controller at one CWP
Backup and hot standby of the group servers, LANs, work stations and availability of the channel of direct access to radar data including plan data elements ensure failure-free performance of the system.