The Improvement of Air Traffic Control Automation System: Exploration and Application of Decentralized Multi-Level Architecture

With the rapid growth of China's civil aviation traffic, the processing capacity and system load of large-scale air traffic control (ATC) automation systems will exceed the safety limits that the system can withstand. The safe operation of the system is severely challenged, and the operation of a single large-scale system also has risks. The over-centralized system architecture will affect the air traffic of the controlled airspace and even the whole country when a serious system failure occurs. Addressing the problems and challenges faced by three current major regional ATC automation system of China's civil aviation, the paper proposes a multi-level architecture of large-scale ATC automation system, which includes area control layer, approach control layer, and tower control layer. A sharing mechanism based on MH/T4029.3 protocol and fast handover technology is adopted to provide unified, simultaneous flight data interaction between each layer. Experimental results show that our methods effectively improve the efficiency and stability of ATC operations, as well as the reliability of the large-scale ATC system.