With aviation traffic reaching unprecedent levels, surveillance is a critical service for ensuring operations safety and for improving airspace and airport capacity to accommodate the increasing traffic forecast. ASTONISH objective is to develop new surveillance solutions to sustain the growth of the European aviation sector using innovative technologies, addressing the peculiar challenges of airborne and ground traffic management. ASTONISH consortium identified three critical solutions:
‐ “Alternate surveillance for ATM operations”, i.e. ground-based systems for en-route and terminal areas surveillance (addressed in WP2)
‐ “Avionics architectures for alternate surveillance”, i.e. aircraft-based A-SUR (Alternate-Surveillance) technology (addressed in WP3)
‐ “Improved aircraft protection on ground”, i.e. airport and aircraft-based surveillance sensing systems for ground operations (addressed in WP4)
ASTONISH will investigate the use of an LDACS-based passive multistatic radar system and a network of distributed active radar systems (WP2) to increase safety and capacity of sectors not covered by primary or secondary surveillance services, while providing a robust backup solution for non-cooperative surveillance. These solutions are expected to be cost-effective and environmental-friendly, built on services offered by LDACS to deliver a fully integrated CNS solution.
A-SUR solution (WP3) will leverage the Hyperconnected ATM concept to use existing and potential new datalink channels such SATCOM, LDACS, VDLM2, 5G and LTE as alternative means for downlinking aircraft surveillance data. The objective is to relieve the congestion on the 1030 MHz and 1090 MHz frequencies used by SSR, ADS-B, and TCAS, offering a secure and robust solution for cooperative surveillance with limited impact on surveillance infrastructures and avionics systems.
ASTONISH solution for improving aircraft safety (WP4) during ground operation will investigate new sensing systems such as lidars, radars, and vision-based sensor at aircraft and airport level, improving ground operation safety and airport resilience by increasing the situational awareness of the pilots and air traffic controllers under all-weather conditions.
Transversal WPs - WP1 and WP5 - are dedicated to '“Project management” and “Communication, dissemination and exploitation”, respectively.
