Sensis Delivers World's First Multilateration System
DEWITT, NY – December 2, 2002 – Sensis Corporation today announced that National Air Traffic Services Ltd. (NATS), United Kingdom has begun live operational usage of the Sensis Multistatic Dependent Surveillance (MDS) system for managing surface traffic at London Heathrow Airport. This event marks the world’s first operational usage of a multilateration system for air traffic control and validates the suitability for every day operational service of this novel surveillance technology. MDS, a transponder multilateration system, interacts with an aircraft’s transponder to determine aircraft and airport vehicle position and identification. With Sensis’ MDS system, air traffic controllers at Europe’s busiest airport will now have access to multilateration data for traffic management.
The Sensis MDS system processes signals from transponder-equipped aircraft and vehicles using a time difference of arrival technique commonly called multilateration. The system successfully passed all Site Acceptance Test (SAT) criteria in October at which time NATS signed an acceptance certificate for the system.
Graeme Henderson, manager of Surveillance and Display Systems for NATS Airports, said, “I am confident that the introduction of MDS at Heathrow will give major safety and efficiency benefits.”
Heathrow’s MDS system provides air traffic controllers with accurate surveillance coverage of the runways, taxiways and gate areas. The system utilizes 15 small sensors installed around the airport area to track transponder-equipped aircraft and vehicles. Surveillance data is transferred to a display processing system where it is fused with surface movement radar data and displayed on a controller workstation. Mr. Henderson further commented, “For the first time, air traffic controllers have an accurate, labeled display of all aircraft on the airport surface, in all weather conditions.”
Marc J. Viggiano, president of Sensis Corporation’s Air Traffic Systems Division, added, “Today is an important day for civil aviation. After years of development and demonstration, multilateration technology will begin enhancing the safety and efficiency of the world’s air transport system.”
In addition to the system at London Heathrow, Sensis is under contract to field operational systems at seven of Europe’s busiest airports – Brussels Airport (Belgium); Charles de Gaulle Airport (France); Frankfurt Airport (Germany); Geneva International Airport (Switzerland); Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (The Netherlands); Vienna International Airport (Austria); and Zurich Airport (Switzerland). Further, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will be deploying the Sensis multilateration system to more than 25 airports as part of the ASDE-X system, a turn-key airport surface management system. Sensis is the FAA’s ASDE-X prime contractor and is currently installing and testing ASDE-X systems at several U.S. airports.
Sensis’ MDS system also creates a seamless transition to the future of aviation surveillance technology – Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) – a concept in which aircraft periodically broadcast their position, velocity, heading and other information as determined by their avionics for processing by other systems.
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