Vision on aviation surveillance systems

The FAA's future aviation surveillance systems fall into four categories: automatic dependent surveillance (ADS) will be used in the oceanic environment; ADS-broadcast (ADS-B) will be used in the domestic en route environment; ADS-B will be used with a secondary radar backup in the terminal area; and ADS-B will be used with primary radar backup within the airport surface traffic automation (ASTA) system on the airport's surface environment. Two other systems introduced are cockpit display of traffic information (CDTI) and traffic advisory and collision avoidance system (TCAS). All these systems will use navigational signals emitted by the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation of satellites. The paper is a visionary look at these future systems.