2 AIRPORT MAGAZINE | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

The first Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) ground stations are up and running. As the deployment continues, could your airport be in line for one?

by Sean Broderick

Anybody still wondering how much FAA’s ambitious ADS-B deployment will truly benefit airports should consider this: the rollout’s now-underway segment one included definitive plans for ground stations at

only two airports: Louisville International and Philadelphia International. Yet, with just one part of the 26-part segment complete, there are already ground stations at five airports — all of them in Florida.

In late August, FAA and ITT, the ADS-B program infrastructure lead, declared the first part, or service volume, in ADS-B segment one ready for prime time. The service volume covers the Miami enroute area, a block of high-altitude airspace over southern Florida. ITT found that it could blanket the Miami enroute radar coverage with 11 ADS-B ground stations.

Some careful surveying determined that five of these could be located on airports and still allow ITT to cover the high-altitude airspace without adding additional stations. As a result, one step into the national ADS-B deployment, Boca Raton, Dade-Collier, Lakeland Linder, Marathon and Sebastian airports are now a de facto part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System. Sebastian’s ground station was the first commissioned at an airport. A

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3AIRPORT MAGAZINE | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

ADS-B IN YOUR BACKYARD?

ADS-B is the foundation for FAA’s Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). It uses ground stations, on-aircraft avionics and satellite data to paint an accurate picture of what is happening in the sky. ADS-B relies on aircraft continuously broadcasting their positions, speed and other key information, which is fed to other properly equipped aircraft and to ground stations. This data also is collected by air traffic control facilities, which use it to separate aircraft. The aircraft position data is derived from satellites, which are much more accurate than today’s ground-based radar. ADS-B’s primary air traffic benefits include:

Air-to-air surveillance capability

Surveillance to remote or inhospitable areas that do not currently have coverage with radar

Real-time traffic and aeronautical information in the cockpit

Reduced separation and greater predictability in departure and arrival times

Support for common separation standards, both horizontal and vertical, for all classes of airspace

Improved ability of airlines to manage traffic and aircraft fleets

Improved ability of air traffic controllers to plan arrivals and departures far in advance

Reduced cost of the infrastructure needed to operate the National Airspace System

4 AIRPORT MAGAZINE | OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2008

“People say, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch,’” said ITT Surveillance and Broadcast Services Implementation Director Mike Gable, “but sometimes there is.”

ITT’s task is simple yet daunting: it must bring ADS-B coverage to 311 service volumes, or chunks of airspace — each of them existing air traffic control facilities — by installing about 800 ground stations. The service volumes break down into 40 enroute volumes (listed above), 236 terminal volumes and 35 surface volumes (see chart on page 21). Strictly speaking, the 35 surface volumes — which include Louisville and Philadelphia — are the only airports guaranteed to get full ADS-B capabilities down to the airfield. But as the Miami enroute deployment showed, ITT is working to bring most ADS-B benefits to as many airport surfaces as possible, regardless of size.

“The philosophy we came up with last summer, which led us to start visiting airports, is: if we can get our system engineers focused in the right direction, we can find ways to provide total services to airports that otherwise would not receive them,” Gable explained. “The secret is not adding systems. We’d love to go onto every airport, but if we go on an airport and end up with a hole somewhere and we have to add another radio station, that’s a million-dollar expenditure that we can’t justify.”

Segment Two By 2013 Segment one’s to-do list is 22 enroute volumes, two terminal volumes and the Louisville and Philadelphia surface volumes. Gable estimates that about 300 radio stations will be required for these. Plans call for all 26 volumes to be rolled out by late 2010. By then, FAA is expected to formally order the segment two volumes, including the other 33 airports designated for surface coverage. Segment two is expected to be complete by 2013.

Alaska Highway - Copper River - Isabel Pass Alaska Peninsula Albuquerque Anchorage - Fairbanks Atlanta Boston Chicago Cleveland Cook Inlet - Kodiak Denver Ft Worth Galena - Mid Yukon River - Koyukuk River Guam Gulf of Mexico Low Altitude Gulf of Mexico High Altitude Honolulu Houston Indianapolis Jacksonville Juneau

Kansas City Kotzebue - Northwest Alaska Lake Clark - Bristol Bay Los Angeles McGrath - Upper Kuskokwim Memphis Miami Minneapolis New York Nome - Seward Peninsula North Slope Oakland Prince William Sound - Gulf of Alaska Salt Lake City San Juan Seattle Southeast Alaska Upper Yukon River Washington Yukon - Kuskokwim Delta En

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Source: ITT

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Just how many airports will have so-called “total service”— meaning a ground station on the airfield or near enough to open up the floodgate of data-gathering that makes ADS-B so valuable — is impossible to determine. Placing five of the first 11 ground stations on airports was “tremendous,” Gable noted, but he is quick to caution that such a percentage isn’t sustainable as the rollout continues. For example, the early word on the Gulf of Mexico enroute infrastructure shows that nine land sites will be needed (in addition to more sites on oil platforms out in the Gulf) to cover the airspace. Preliminary analysis shows that only two of these nine can go on airports. On the flip side, the Fort Myers terminal service volume can most likely be covered with just two stations — each one at an airport located on either side of the airspace footprint.

Airports not on the surface volume list that are hoping to land a ground station shouldn’t worry about being overlooked. ITT’s engineers will explore every possible angle as they plan enroute and terminal volume coverage, Gable said. Four of the five Florida airports that received stations were selected because of the value that the ground station would bring to the airport, as opposed to the airport being the ideal location for the station, he noted. Little-used Dade-Collier, built in the 1970s for

supersonic transports to serve the Miami area but now officially “closed to [the] public except by arrangement with the Miami-Dade Aviation Department,” is an ideal locale for a station to cover western approaches to Miami International.

ADS-B Ground StationsFrom a technical standpoint, the surface volume installations and the enroute or terminal installations on airports bring different capabilities. Surface volumes will be set up so that ADS-B signals cover the entire air operations area, which enables the aircraft position data to be used by controllers in the tower. “If an aircraft moves and is under ground control, we want to see it,” Gable said. For most airports, two ground stations will suffice. For larger facilities, such as Dallas/Fort Worth, more stations will be needed.

The ADS-B ground stations are similar to cellular phone towers. It’s no surprise, then, that ITT has struck a deal with AT&T to put ADS-B equipment on existing cell towers in places where it makes sense. Unfortunately, airports aren’t exactly ideal places for cell towers, so ITT’s effort to put its equipment on

NEXTGEN

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airports requires a bit of extra infrastructure — a small patch of land and a short tower, located well outside local flight paths. FAA and ITT share the cost of these additional towers, but the added benefits will more than offset the extra expense, Gable noted.

Key Information TransmittedAirports that pick up ground stations as part of enroute or terminal service volume build-outs will have one station per facility, Gable said. While this won’t permit use of aircraft position data for on-ground air traffic control purposes, these airports and their users will reap all of the other benefits of ADS-B — which are tremendous, according to industry officials.

For example, a ground station’s Flight Information Services-Broadcast (FIS-B) function transmits key information like weather and NOTAMS. At airports with on-field or nearby ground stations, ADS-B-equipped pilots will be able to pick up this information, giving them increased situational awareness before they begin a trip.

The ADS-B data feed itself — aircraft position, identification, speed and more — also will prove

valuable to airports. Though primarily an air traffic control tool, the ADS-B data stream is expected to be tapped for many other applications. Airports could use the arrival and departure data to help track usage fees, such as landing fees or transient aircraft charges. Tying a data feed into a video monitor could create a de facto Flight Information Display System (FIDS) for an FBO lobby.

Of course, all of the on-airport ground stations in the world are useless, if the aircraft flying around them aren’t equipped with the right avionics. “The only way ATC gets the maximum benefit out of the ADS-B program is through equipage of aircraft,” Gable noted.

Assuming that aircraft equipage is not an issue — which it can’t be, if ADS-B is to deliver on its promise — airports fortunate enough to have a ground station will have an abundance of information at their fingertips. “We couldn’t sit and make a list of all the things ADS-B can do for [airports],” Gable said. “When you put that station on the airport, you now have all of the data. What that data can be used for now and in the future is up to the imagination of the people who have the data.” A

Sean Broderick is AAAE’s vice president-external communications and editor-at-

large of Airport Magazine.

NEXTGEN

Baltimore-Washington

Boston Logan

Bradley

Charlotte Douglas

Chicago Midway

Chicago O’Hare

Dallas/Fort Worth

Denver

Detroit Metro Wayne County

Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood

General Mitchell

George Bush Intercontinental

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta

Honolulu - Hickam AFB

John F. Kennedy

John Wayne-Orange County

Lambert-St. Louis

Las Vegas McCarran

Los Angeles

Louisville

Memphis

Miami

Minneapolis-St. Paul

New York LaGuardia

Newark

Orlando

Philadelphia

Phoenix Sky Harbor

Reagan National

Salt Lake City

San Diego

Seattle-Tacoma

T.F. Green State

Washington Dulles

William P. Hobby

ADS-B Surface Service

Volumes

ADS-B Terminal Area Service VolumesAbilene Akron-Canton Albany Albuquerque Allentown Alpena Amarillo Anchorage Andrews AFB Asheville Aspen Atlanta Atlantic City Atwater-Castle Augusta Austin Bakersfield Baltimore Bangor Barksdale AFB Baton Rouge Beaumont Billings Binghamton Birmingham Intl Bismark Boise Boston Bradley-Windsor Locks Bristol Buffalo Burbank Burlington Casper Cedar Rapids Champaign Charleston AFB/Intl Charleston Charlotte-Douglas Charlottesville Chattanooga Cheyenne Chicago Midway Chicago Clarksburg Cleveland-Hopkins

Colorado Springs Columbia Metropolitan Columbia Columbus (Ga.) Columbus (Ohio) Corpus Christi Covington-Cincinnati Dallas-Fort Worth Dayton Daytona Beach Denver Des Moines Detroit Dulles Duluth Dyess AFB El Paso Elmira-Corning Erie (Ridge) Eugene Evansville Fairbanks Fairchild AFB Falmouth-Otis AFB Fargo-Hector Intl Fayetteville Fayetteville- Springdale Flint (Bishop) Florence Fort Huachuca/Sierra Vista Fort Lauderdale- Hollywood Fort Smith Fort Wayne Fresno Fort Myers Gainesville Garden City Grand Forks Grand Junction Grand Rapids Great Falls Green Bay Greensboro Greer/Greenville-

Spartanburg

Gulfport-Biloxi Gwinn (KI Sawyer) Harlingen Harrisburg (Middletown) Hilo Honolulu Houston-Hobby Houston- Intercontinental Huntington Huntsville Indianapolis Islip/Long Island Jackson Jacksonville John F. Kennedy Kahului Kalamazoo Kansas City Knoxville La Guardia Lafayette Lake Charles Langley AFB Lansing Las Vegas Lawton (Fort Sill AAF) Lexington Lihue (Kauai) Lincoln Little Rock Longview Los Angeles Louisville Lubbock Lynchburg Macon Madison Manchester Mansfield Marysville-Beale AFB MCAS Miramar Medford Memphis Merced Miami Midland Milwaukee Minneapolis-St.Paul

Minot Missoula Mobile Moline Monroe Monterey/Fort Ord Marina Montgomery Moses Lake (Grant County) Mount Clemens Muskegon Myrtle Beach Nantucket Mem NAS Whiting Field (Milton) Nashville New Orleans Newark Newburgh (Stewart) Norfolk North Platte Oakland Oceanside-Camp Pendleton Offutt AFB Oklahoma City Omaha Ontario Orlando Palm Springs Pasco Patrick AFB Patuxent River NA (Trapnell Field) Pensacola NAS Pensacola Peoria Philadelphia Phoenix Pittsburgh Pope AFB Portland (Maine) Portland (Ore.)Providence Provo Pueblo Raleigh-Durham Reading (Spaatz) Reagan National Reno Richmond Roanoke

Rochester (Minn.) Rochester (N.Y.) Rockford Rome (Griffiss) Roswell Sacramento-McClellan Saginaw (Freeland) Salt Lake City San Angelo (Mathis) San Antonio San Diego San Francisco San Jose San Juan Sanford Santa Ana Santa Barbara Santa Maria Sarasota- Bradenton Savannah Scranton-Wilkes- Barre (Suscon) Seattle-Tacoma Shreveport Sioux City Sioux Falls-Joe Foss South Bend Spokane Springfield Springfield St. Louis/Lambert St.Thomas Stockton Syracuse Tallahassee Tampa Terre Haute Tinker AFB Toledo Tucson/Davis- Monthan AFB Tulsa Waco Waterloo West Palm Beach Wichita Williams Gateway Wilmington Wilmington Yakima/McAllister Youngstown Yuma

Source: ITT

Reprinted with permission from Airport Magazine, Oct/Nov 2008,©2008 American Association of Airport Executives. All Rights Reserved. By The Reprint Dept. 800-259-0470 (11349-1208)

For Web Posting Only. Bulk Printing Prohibited.

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