DDS is the Data Connectivity Backbone for Europe ’ s Next-Generation Air Traffic Control and Management Systems
CHALLENGE
Several independent studies from EUROCONTROL and the Federal Aviation Authority ( FAA ) are predicting that air traffic volumes will double by 2025 . In addition to this volume increase , the Kyoto Protocol is imposing stronger regulation in terms of pollution , thus requiring more effective gate-to-gate air traffic control . Currently deployed Air Traffic Control and Management technologies are close to reaching their structural limit and are incapable of optimizing the gate-to-gate transit of aircraft . As a result , existing technologies will not be able to keep up with the predicted volume increases and will not be effective in optimizing gateto-gate operations and thus reducing pollution and improving the overall performance of the ATM system .
CASE STUDIES
SOLUTION
The CoFlight Program , headed by THALES , SELEX-SI , DSNA , ENAV and Skyguide , has developed a next generation Flight Data Processing ( FDP ) System , which fully in line with the Single European Sky ATM Research ( SESAR ) objectives , will reduce the environmental impact of aviation , improve flight cost efficiency , and optimize the airspace usage .
CoFlight has embraced open architecture principles and is built on a standard middleware infrastructure . One of the core technologies at the foundation of CoFlight is the Object Management Group ’ s Data-Distribution Service for Real-Time Systems ( DDS ). Leveraging DDS has allowed the CoFlight Program to achieve these objectives .
BENEFITS
CoFlight deals with well over 6GB of flight data plans which are cached and persisted by DDS . In this use case , DDS is used as a symmetric distributed cache , providing low-latency access for flight plans to FDP servers . DDS also takes care of persisting changes to hundreds of flight data plans per second .
Along with posing some unique technical challenges , the FDP Servers are SWAL-2 ( Software Assurance Level 2 ) components — one of the most critical elements of the entire FDP System . Thanks to its industrial strength development process , the DDS implementation used on the program was capable of providing evidence to allow the CoFlight consortium to qualify the use of DDS in SWAL-2 components .
DDS is used within CoFlight to distribute real-time updates to the Controller Working Positions ( CWP )— which in some centers can add up to several hundred . The CWPs are able to customize the presentation of information available taking advantage of the advanced filtering and query capabilities available in DDS .
DDS is also used to allow different CoFlight systems , deployed within or across nations , to interoperate . In this case DDS takes care of distributing in real-time , with high reliability , efficiency , and scalability the flightdata-plans across a Wide Area Network ( WAN ). As EUROCAE , in the EC-133 standard , has mandated the use of DDS for exchanging flight data plans across European air traffic control centers , DDS will also be used to enable interoperability with non-CoFlight-based ATC / ATM centers .
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