Astronomy & Space Sciences
Title : | Dynamic Modelling and Optimal Management of Air-traffic over Indian Airspace |
Area of research : | Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Astronomy & Space Sciences |
Focus area : | Dynamic modelling of air traffic |
Principal Investigator : | Prof. Radhakant Padhi, Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) Bangalore |
Timeline Start Year : | 2019 |
Contact info : | padhi@iisc.ac.in ; omkar@aero.iisc.ernet.in ; sureshsundaram[at]iisc.ac.in |
Details
Executive Summary : | At present, the air-traffic flow is primarily controlled by the Air traffic control (ATC) system, where decisions are mainly taken manually. However, the rapid growth in the air traffic over Indian airspace is slowly becoming quite overwhelming for the existing ATC system to handle. Appropriate safety measures need to be taken to maintain sufficient separation between them at all point of time while maximizing the air traffic volume in the available airspace at all time. Since different aircrafts fly at different speeds, and aircrafts cannot hover for buying time for decision making, the problem is substantially complex. This problem is aggravated in the vicinity of the airports located in metro cities. Since manual monitoring of all aircrafts 24/7 in real-time is impossible, optimal and intelligent technology needs to be developed to automate the process as much as possible. The first step in this direction is to have a reliable air traffic flow model for all commercial flights, so that the traffic density in future time can be predicted and appropriate decision can be taken well ahead of time. This problem has been well recognized in the USA, and NASA has come up with the Future ATM Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) model. Using the FACET model, many interesting and useful research has been and are being carried out in the USA. Similar research is also being carried out in the Europe on the same topic. However, such a dynamic air-traffic model does not exist for Indian airspace and hence there is no activity in India towards it. Therefore, creation of such an extensive dynamic "Air Traffic Model for Airspace of India (ATMAI) model”, which will include both cruising flights en-route as well as flights near the airports, will be one of the primary objectives of this project. This model will include kinematics of flight, information from Base of Aircraft Data (BADA) database about performance characteristics of aircrafts, Geodesic co-ordinates of Airports and declared flight schedules of Airlines.
After developing the ATMAI model, a variety of intensive research will be carried out such as (a) 4-D trajectory optimization for maximizing the runway capacity, (b) collision free network stability analysis for an airline's intent to introduce new flights, (c) Sense-and-avoid reactive collision avoidance in case of emergencies, (d) optimized area navigation (RNAV) resulting in limited free-flight trajectories, (e) Online re-optimization of trajectories in case of bad weather and/or emergencies, (f) Machine Learning algorithms for handling big data for business intelligence analytics. In summary, developing a reliable air-traffic model, followed by an optimal and safe air-traffic management system in a “scientific manner” will be the primary focus of this research. The outcome of this project will lead to safe and effective management of the air-traffic over Indian airspace. |
Co-PI: | Dr Omkar Subbarama Narasipur, Dr Ashish Verma, Associate Professor, Dr Suresh Sundaram, Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) Bangalore |
Total Budget (INR): | 1,10,46,280 |
Achievements : | Limited model development and validation has been done. A user friendly GUI has been developed which, in addition to visualizing the predicted data, can communicate with the back-end software (containing the air traffic model). |
Organizations involved