26 Febraury, 2009

THE RADAR MULTILATERATION AT MALPENSA

THE RESULTES OF THE EUROPEAN PROJECT EMMA ARE PRESENTED
GROUND CONTROL SYSTEMS STANDARD ARE EXTABLISHED

Today at Malpensa, ENAV and SELEX Sistemi Integrati (Finmeccanica Company) presented, in
front of more than 100 international guests coming from all Europe, the resultes of the European Airport
Movement Management (EMMA), an experimental research and development project for the air security,
started in 2004. The objective of the program, articulated in two phases (EMMA1 and EMMA2) and
partially financed by the European Commission for the total amount of about 38 million euro, is to
increment the capacity and the security of the aeroportual operations during low visibility conditions also.
The experimentation was conducted in three aereoports (Malpensa, Prague and Toulose), selected
by the European Commission for the operational characteristics. The resultes of the study help to define
standards and requirements that during the middle period will be adopted in all the principal european
landings.
The A-SMGCS (Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System) that was presented
at Malpensa today, has the capacity to automatize and integrate some functions by the radar
multilateration, increasing the security and the efficiency of the airport surface movements. The new
surveillance systems will determine with a better precision the aeroplane’s position by a simple and
intuitive interface: the tower controller, more than he knows the exact position of the aeroplane in the
land, will be able to identify the typology, the name and further aids as the electronic control of the pilot’s
execution and the Route Planner. Through efficiency criteria it will be able to suggest to the Controller
the better route for the airplane, with a consequent saving of petrol and less pollution.
Moreover: in the case of very low visibility, the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization)
norms impose limitations of the mobility on the taxiways, the new systems enhancing the airport surface
movements will limited delays for both the landing and take off phases, achieving strong advantages
(also economics) for Air Companies and airport administrators.
In particular, SELEX Sistemi Integrati supplied Electronic Flight Strips systems for the electronic
management of land’s flight route, Route Planning, for the automatic selection of the optimal route of the
aeroplane on the runway, ADS-B, to point out the presence of an aeroplane on the land by the
transmission of the aeroplane, TIS-B (Traffic Information System Broadcast) to transmit to the cockpit
surveillance data from the control tower, CPDLC (Controller Pilot Data Link Communication) for the
communication via data-link between the pilot and the control tower.
The necessity to increase the efficiency of the control systems and the air surveillance for the
management of the airport surface, maintaining unaltered and increasing the security levels, began from
the higher request of traffic that involved the airports in the last ten years.
Even today in several airports of the world the surface traffic control system, named SMGCS
(Surface Movement Guidance and Control System), is substantially manual and is based on the capacity
of the Tower Controller to monitoring air traffic of the taxiways, the runways and the connection points
between taxiways and runways.