Air traffic control using Virtual Stationary Automata

Abstract

As air travel has become an essential part of modern life, the air traffic control system has become strained and overworked. This problem is occurring because the capacity of the current air traffic control system is severely limited by the capabilities of its human operators. Therefore, if we are to increase the capacity of the air traffic control system, then we must develop new automated systems for air traffic control. In my thesis, I take a distributed approach to automated air traffic control. I use a wireless ad-hoc network to simulate a layer of Virtual Stationary Automata, or VSAs, which are virtual machines located at fixed locations in space. These VSAs can then be used to help coordinate the aircraft in the air traffic control system. I model the air traffic control system as a directed graph, showing how the continuous real world air traffic can be abstracted into a discrete graph representation. Using this graph representation, I provide two algorithms to perform safe and efficient air traffic control and prove their effectiveness.