A light-propagation model for aircraft trajectory planning

Nour Elhouda Dougui (1) , Daniel Delahaye (1) , Stéphane Puechmorel (2) , Marcel Mongeau (3)

1 MAIAA - ENAC - Laboratoire de Mathématiques Appliquées, Informatique et Automatique pour l'Aérien
2 ENAC - Ecole Nationale de l'Aviation Civile
3 MAIA-OPTIM - ENAC Equipe MAIAA-OPTIM

The need for increasing air-traffic capacity motivates planning air- craft trajectories in 4D (space+time). In order to generate sets of conflict-free 4D trajectories, we introduce a new natural-paradigm al- gorithm: the light propagation algorithm (LPA). This algorithm is a wavefront propagation method that yields natural solutions for the path planning problem, specifically in the case of air-traffic congestion. Indeed, LPA yields very encouraging results on real-world day of traffic over France while satisfying the specific constraints of air-traffic management.

Mots clés: branch and bound; geodesic; nature-inspired algorithm; aircraft conflict resolution; air-traffic management; light-propagation model

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]; Optimisation et contrôle [math.OC]

Nour Elhouda Dougui, Daniel Delahaye, Stéphane Puechmorel, Marcel Mongeau. A light-propagation model for aircraft trajectory planning. Journal of Global Optimization, 2013, 56 (3), pp 873-895. ⟨10.1007/s10898-012-9896-1⟩. ⟨hal-00935210⟩