Conceptual Analysis of Allocation Strategies for Air Traffic Control Concepts without Conventional Sector Boundaries

Allocation strategies are an essential part of implementing new air traffic management (ATM) concepts where sector boundaries change dynamically or are eliminated altogether, as in the case of Flight Centric Air Traffic Control (FCA). In the latter, the conventional allocation of aircraft to controllers based on fixed geographically defined sector boundaries no longer exists. Allocation strategies are used to re-establish the allocation with the aim to reduce the workload (WL) for each individual controller while at the same time achieving an even workload distribution among all controllers. The allocation can be done by a human allocator or an allocation system. A combination of both is also a possible option. The allocation of aircraft to controllers follows set rules, which can be static, dynamic or a combination of both. At the German Aerospace Center (DLR), first human-in-the-loop (HITL) simulations on a small FCA airspace were conducted to validate the applicability of initial allocation concepts. This paper presents various allocation approaches and discusses human-in-the-loop simulations performed for a dynamic, automatic allocation and a static, automatic allocation.