FLIGHT CENTRIC AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL WITH AIRSTREAMS. A NEW APPROACH TO TRAFFIC FLOW MODELING
Résumé
This paper is relative to FC2A project that addresses a challenging approach for an environmentally friendly, more agile Air Traffic Management (ATM) framework by combining Flight Centric ATC and Airstream concepts. The day-today adaptation of the Airstream network to the demand of the airspace users will provide a resilient and scalable system which supports Dynamic Airspace Configuration. Driven by the digitalization of ATM, autonomous management of aircraft inside the Airstream is promoted. Using ENAC's simulation tool, traffic demand is decomposed into main flows by a bundling algorithm. The algorithm identifies medoids, AirStream Reference Tracks (ASRTs), characterizing these flows. The ASRTs will define the backbone of the Airstream network. An Airstream can be compared to a corridor/highway composed of longitudinal lanes inside vertical airspace blocks. Flight families are defined based on the speed distribution of the sample. They will support the creation of the internal longitudinal structure. The traffic aggregated for each ASRT is used to model the 3D architecture of the Airstream. The number of lanes for each vertical level and the height of the blocks are generated using various indexes characterizing the mean time between aircraft on the same lane. Finally, aggregated trajectories are recomputed on the appropriate lanes.