Tiling the world — Efficient 4D conflict detection for large scale scenarios

Today, 4D-trajectory-based operations and international harmonization for global air traffic management (ATM) systems are the main driving concept elements for the modernization of ATM. The availability of ground-based 4D trajectories leads to new possibilities allowing early conflict detection and efficient conflict avoidance. Nevertheless, efficient conflict detection becomes a big challenge when dealing with large amounts of detailed trajectories in a global environment. This paper proposes a new representation of 4D trajectories facilitating a high performance conflict detection algorithm. The proposed algorithm subdivides the initial envelope of all trajectories in smaller 4D tiles until each tile contains only one trajectory. If that is not possible before reaching a predefined minimum tile size, a conflict is detected. Since the algorithm's runtime is only marginally influenced by the scenario's complexity, this technique is particularly efficient for large scale scenarios.