Handling trajectory uncertainties for airborne conflict management

Airborne conflict management is an enabling capability for NASA's distributed air-ground traffic management (DAG-TM) concept. DAGTM has the goal of significantly increasing capacity within the National Airspace System, while maintaining or improving safety. Under DAG-TM, "autonomous" aircraft maintain separation from each other and from "managed" aircraft unequipped for autonomous flight. Reliable trajectory prediction is a key capability for providing effective ACM functions. Trajectory uncertainties due to environmental effects, differences in aircraft systems and performance, and unknown intent information lead to prediction errors that can adversely affect AOP performance. These buffers is structured based on prediction errors noted from previous simulations such as a recent joint experiment between NASA Ames and Langley Research Centers and from other outside studies. Currently defined ADS-B parameters related to navigation capability, trajectory type, and path conformance is used to support the algorithms that generate the buffers.