A Medium-Term Conflict Detection and Resolution Method for Open Low-Altitude City Airspace Based on Temporally and Spatially Integrated Strategies

The balancing of civil airspace capacities with customer demands is achieved through air traffic management (ATM), which uses decision support tools in ATM systems that are ensured by advanced communications and contemporary navigation technologies. However, uncertainties and perturbations can emerge during low-altitude airspace traffic management when considering plans to gradually open up low-altitude airspace in China. Domino effects of time and space deviations to one trajectory may lead to the generation of other 4-D trajectories (4-D trajectories defined based on a series of sequential waypoints recording three dimensions of spatial information and their relevant time information) due to strong levels of spatiotemporal connectivity between trajectories, rendering management challenging. This paper introduces background information and a literature review about conflict detection and resolution (CD&R) for open low-altitude airspace. From our analysis, a CD algorithm for a spatial grid partition system (SGPS) is presented. A conflict resolution (CR) framework of temporally and spatially integrated strategies including the time scheduling-based technique and vertical change-based technique (VCBT) was applied to the CR process. The CD&R algorithm was tested based on a practical maneuver scenario to check its validity, and an analysis of computational performance levels was conducted through several experiments. Airspace capacities can be enhanced to alleviate local airspace network perturbations through the use of the proposed CD&R algorithm.