Innsbruck Airport Maximizing Efficiency with Sensis’ Multistatic Dependent Surveillance for Enhanced Terminal and Approach Surveillance

DEWITT, NY - February 1, 2005 - Sensis Corporation today announced that Innsbruck Airport, Innsbruck, Austria has begun live operational use of Sensis' Multistatic Dependent Surveillance (MDS) for enhanced terminal and approach surveillance. Sensis' MDS provides air traffic controllers a surveillance picture with an accuracy of seven meters on the runway and taxiway and 60 meters accuracy in the air. Regardless of the often inclement weather conditions surrounding the Inn Valley, MDS offers coverage 30 nmi east and 20 nmi west of the airport within a 350 square nmi total coverage area.

Austro Control GmbH, the air navigation service provider for Innsbruck Airport, Austria, must ensure the safety of 200 aircraft movements per day. Mountain ranges over 9,000 feet high to the north and south of the airport make traditional radar surveillance financially and logistically prohibitive. Further, because of the mountainous terrain surrounding the Inn Valley, Innsbruck Airport must route both incoming and outgoing planes in the same direction.

"Austro Control considered installing traditional radar in the mountains for years. We concluded that the number of installations necessary to provide radar coverage throughout the Inn Valley and the cost of maintaining the installations would be too expensive for an airport of our size," said Johann Zemsky, Chief Operating Officer of Austro Control. "Sensis designed a cost effective system that optimizes coverage within the valley and is scalable to increase the coverage area in the future if required."

Sensis' MDS, a transponder multilateration system, uses low-cost, low-maintenance, non-rotating sensors to detect and track the movement of aircraft or vehicles based on their transponder signals. These sensors were installed on the airport and in the mountains surrounding Innsbruck Airport. 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.

"Sensis' MDS allows air traffic controllers to track aircraft from the gate to 20 miles out of the airport," said Johann Zemsky, Chief Operating Officer of Austro Control. "The current Innsbruck Airport system is a significant step towards covering all of Austria in an integrated Wide Area Multilateration picture."

"Innsbruck Airport demonstrates how Sensis' MDS system can be adapted and scaled to meet customers' needs," said Marc Viggiano, president of Sensis' Air Traffic Systems division. "From surface to enhanced terminal to wide area surveillance, MDS provides an accurate and reliable picture that significantly improves efficiency and safety."

In addition to being operational at Innsbruck Airport, Sensis' multilateration technology is being deployed for enhanced terminal surveillance at Frankfurt Airport. MDS is also being deployed for wide area multilateration at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (Maryland) and for the Helicopter In-Flight Tracking program (Gulf of Mexico). For surface surveillance, MDS is operational at five European airports and is being installed at three additional European Airports. 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).