Conflict Management Considering a Smooth Transition of Aircraft Into Adjacent Airspace

A new framework for conflict resolution in air traffic control is studied using air traffic complexity, which ensures conflict avoidance among aircraft and smooth transition of aircraft into adjacent airspace. The air traffic complexity is modeled as deviations in heading angle or speed of the aircraft inside a sector to resolve any conflict induced by the entering aircraft. For conflict management in multisector planning, a two-level hierarchical architecture is proposed. In the higher level, the maneuver constraints of the aircraft are constructed to minimize complexity for the neighboring sectors. In the lower level, the conflict avoidance problem is formulated as a mixed integer linear programming considering the maneuver constraints, which are defined in the higher level. With the two-level hierarchical architecture, the aircraft can find the optimal solution to resolve conflicts among the aircraft and reduce the air traffic complexity of the neighboring sectors. The performance of the proposed conflict management is demonstrated using numerical simulations.