Sensis Corporation to Improve Air Traffic Controllers’ Situational Awareness Over Tasmania
Wide Area Multilateration System Will Provide Improved Surveillance at Launceston and Hobart Airports.
EAST SYRACUSE, NY – August 22, 2006 – Sensis Corporation announced that Airservices Australia awarded the company a contract to provide Sensis Multistatic Dependent Surveillance (MDS) for wide area surveillance over Tasmania, Australia. Sensis MDS will provide controllers with surveillance that has an accuracy better than 150 meters. Further, Sensis Remote Control and Monitoring System will enable Airservices Australia to easily monitor and maintain the system as well as provide system diagnostics.
“Initial deployment will provide enroute surveillance via multilateration and ADS-B, with surveillance coverage down to ground level at both Launceston and Hobart airports,” said Les Kelly, WAM Project Manager, Airservices Australia. “Once regulatory approvals have been received from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, the system will be used operationally in 2008.”
Sensis MDS can easily scale from a small airport application to country-wide coverage volumes of hundreds of thousands of square miles. The system uses low-maintenance, non-rotating sensors to detect and track the movement of aircraft and vehicles based on their transponder signals. With precision comparable to GPS, a higher update rate than traditional airport surveillance radar, and consistent surveillance performance regardless of weather conditions, Sensis MDS provides significant benefits. Further, through its compatibility with ADS-B, multilateration provides a bridge to new technologies.
“Sensis MDS enables air traffic controllers to more efficiently use airspace through increased accuracy, high update rates and low level coverage,” said Marc Viggiano, Sensis Air Traffic Systems President. “In addition to improving efficiency, the system expands coverage beyond that of traditional radar and closes gaps left open by the technological limits of traditional rotating radar.”
Sensis MDS is operational at Innsbruck Airport (Austria), where the system is the world’s first commissioned multilateration system for wide area surveillance. The system is also deployed for wide area surveillance at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (Maryland) and Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center (California). For surface surveillance, Sensis MDS is operational or being installed at ten major European and Asian airports. The system is also being deployed as part of Sensis A-SMGCS in New Delhi, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney and at 35 U.S. airports for the FAA’s Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X program (ASDE-X).
