Sensis Airport Surveillance System, MDS, Operational at Charles de Gaulle Airport
Multistatic Dependent Surveillance Enables Europe's 3rd Busiest Airport
to Meet Capacity Demands
DEWITT, NY - October 4, 2004 - Sensis Corporation today announced that Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, has begun live operational use of Sensis' airport surveillance system, Multistatic Dependent Surveillance (MDS). Europe's third busiest airport is using MDS for ground surveillance for 1,370 aircraft movements per day. The multilateration system provides air traffic controllers with aircraft position and identity information once a second for a highly reliable display of ground movements. Sensis' MDS also provides supplemental coverage in areas not covered by ground radar. Further, at Charles de Gaulle, MDS has an accuracy of 7.5 meters, far exceeding the ground radar accuracy of 12 meters.
Charles de Gaulle Airport handles more than 500,000 airplane movements a year. This dense capacity coupled with the airport's large freight tonnage and the numerous night departures created a demand for an enhanced surveillance system to better address capacity, especially in low-visibility conditions.
"The airport is a 24-hour operation, handling 120 aircraft per hour," said Jean-Pierre Cochet, project manager for advanced surface movement guidance and control systems and radar equipment for Aéroports de Paris, the airport authority for the greater Paris region. "The one-second update rate and high accuracy of MDS enables Charles de Gaulle to maintain its rate of ground movements regardless of weather conditions."
Sensis' MDS, a transponder multilateration system, uses low-cost, non-rotating sensors to detect and track the movement of aircraft or vehicles based on their transponder signals. With precision comparable to global positioning systems, a higher update rate than traditional airport surveillance radar, and consistent surveillance performance regardless of weather conditions, the MDS system provides significant benefits. Further, through its compatibility with developing concepts such as Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B), multilateration provides a bridge to future technologies.
At Charles de Gaulle, Sensis partnered with NavControl, the French surveillance and navigation
equipment provider, to implement MDS as well as to provide a test system. The test system allows the airport to deploy new MDS software and new sensor configurations and determine what effect they will have on air traffic control without interrupting the operational system. Further, air traffic control students can use the test system as a training tool for hands-on MDS system experience.
"Adaptability is essential to the effectiveness of an air traffic system," said Marc Viggiano, president of Sensis' Air Traffic Systems division. "Sensis' MDS system can easily expand to cover additional areas as an airport grows."
Sensis' multilateration technology is also in operational use for ground surveillance at London Heathrow Airport and Vienna International Airport (Austria) and is being installed at five additional European airports - Brussels Airport (Belgium); Frankfurt Airport (Germany); Geneva International Airport (Switzerland); Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (The Netherlands); and Zurich Airport (Switzerland). For enhanced terminal surveillance, Sensis' multilateration technology is being installed at Innsbruck Airport (Austria) and Frankfurt Airport. Further, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is deploying the Sensis multilateration system to 34 airports as part of the Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X program (ASDE-X).
