A network congestion control approach to airport departure management

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach to managing the aircraft taxi-out process at airports, by posing the problem in a network congestion control framework. We develop a network model for a generic airport and then validate it using surface surveillance data from Boston Logan International Airport. A set of stochastic processes that constitute the link travel times are proposed, followed by a discussion of the theoretical maximum network throughput. Finally, we propose a control algorithm that balances network congestion with performance, while maintaining stability. We show through simulation that the algorithm is capable of regulating total traffic in the network to a desired level.