An analytical study of advanced terminal area air traffic management and control

Abstract

This dissertation gives a comprehensive study of the theory and practice of the advanced terminal area air traffic management and control. The entire terminal area ATM/C system has been formulated as a feedback control system, with individual subsystems identified and described. The ground control system, which is one of the two major control elements in the system, has been studied in detail. Definitions, purposes, input, output, and the processing steps of the control functions in the ground control system have been discussed. Automation of these functions has been recommended. One of the control functions, namely, the path generation function has been presented to demonstrate the automation implementation. Formulated as a two point boundary values problem (TPBVP) of optimal control, solution techniques and numerical examples of the path generation problem have been presented. A Newton-Raphson method on trajectory optimization has been used to carry on the computer simulation. Finally, a one-degree-of-freedom, speed control final approach problem has been presented to demonstrate the application of parametric error analysis to ATM/C system performance evaluation.