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2012 Volume 27
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RESEARCH ARTICLE   Open Access    

Trajectory deconfliction with constraint programming

  • 1.

    École Nationale de l'Aviation Civile

  • 2.

    Direction des Services de la Navigation Aèrienne/Direction de la Technique et de l’ Innovation

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  • Corresponding authors: Nicolas Barnier ;  Cyril Allignol
  • Abstract: As acknowledged by the SESAR (Single European Sky ATM (Air Traffic Management) Research) program, current Air Traffic Control (ATC) systems must be drastically improved to accommodate the predicted traffic growth in Europe. In this context, the Episode 3 project aims at assessing the performance of new ATM concepts, like 4D-trajectory planning and strategic deconfliction.One of the bottlenecks impeding ATC performances is the hourly capacity constraints defined on each en-route ATC sector to limit the rate of aircraft. Previous works were mainly focused on optimizing the current ground holding slot allocation process devised to satisfy these constraints. We propose to estimate the cost of directly solving all conflicts in the upper airspace with ground holding, provided that aircraft were able to follow their trajectories accurately.We present a Constraint Programming model of this large-scale combinatorial optimization problem and the results obtained with the FaCiLe (Functional Constraint Library). We study the effect of uncertainties on the departure time and estimate the cost of improving the robustness of our solutions with the Complete Air Traffic Simulator (CATS). Encouraging results were obtained without uncertainty but the costs of robust solutions are prohibitive. Our approach may however be improved, for example, with a prior flight level allocation and the dynamic resolution of remaining conflicts with one of CATS’ modules.
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  • Cite this article

    Nicolas Barnier, Cyril Allignol. 2012. Trajectory deconfliction with constraint programming. The Knowledge Engineering Review 27(3)291−307, doi: 10.1017/S0269888912000227
    Nicolas Barnier, Cyril Allignol. 2012. Trajectory deconfliction with constraint programming. The Knowledge Engineering Review 27(3)291−307, doi: 10.1017/S0269888912000227
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RESEARCH ARTICLE   Open Access    

Trajectory deconfliction with constraint programming

  • 1.

    École Nationale de l'Aviation Civile

  • 2.

    Direction des Services de la Navigation Aèrienne/Direction de la Technique et de l’ Innovation

  • Corresponding authors: Nicolas Barnier ;  Cyril Allignol
  • Published online: 26 July 2012
The Knowledge Engineering Review  27,  2012, 27(3): 291−307  |  Cite this article

Abstract: Abstract: As acknowledged by the SESAR (Single European Sky ATM (Air Traffic Management) Research) program, current Air Traffic Control (ATC) systems must be drastically improved to accommodate the predicted traffic growth in Europe. In this context, the Episode 3 project aims at assessing the performance of new ATM concepts, like 4D-trajectory planning and strategic deconfliction.One of the bottlenecks impeding ATC performances is the hourly capacity constraints defined on each en-route ATC sector to limit the rate of aircraft. Previous works were mainly focused on optimizing the current ground holding slot allocation process devised to satisfy these constraints. We propose to estimate the cost of directly solving all conflicts in the upper airspace with ground holding, provided that aircraft were able to follow their trajectories accurately.We present a Constraint Programming model of this large-scale combinatorial optimization problem and the results obtained with the FaCiLe (Functional Constraint Library). We study the effect of uncertainties on the departure time and estimate the cost of improving the robustness of our solutions with the Complete Air Traffic Simulator (CATS). Encouraging results were obtained without uncertainty but the costs of robust solutions are prohibitive. Our approach may however be improved, for example, with a prior flight level allocation and the dynamic resolution of remaining conflicts with one of CATS’ modules.

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    Acknowledgments

    • The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees for their valuable suggestions and constructive comments that helped to improve this paper.

    • A flight level is a standard nominal altitude, expressed in hundreds of feet from the international standard pressure datum of 1013.25 hPa.

    • Note that this activity is usually considered as part of tactical flow management rather than ATC.

    • They may be put on a racetrack pattern before landing if the destination airport is congested though.

    • Note that flights might be delayed for other reasons than en-route capacity violation, like bad weather, equipment failures or airport congestion.

    • The Complete Air Traffic Simulator developed at DSNA/DTI.

    • Note that the conflict detection for two given flights is symmetrical, so that only ordered pairs are considered.

    • A better approach would involve a statistical analysis to approximate the probability distribution of the discrepancy between scheduled and actual takeoff times.

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    Cite this article
    Nicolas Barnier, Cyril Allignol. 2012. Trajectory deconfliction with constraint programming. The Knowledge Engineering Review 27(3)291−307, doi: 10.1017/S0269888912000227
    Nicolas Barnier, Cyril Allignol. 2012. Trajectory deconfliction with constraint programming. The Knowledge Engineering Review 27(3)291−307, doi: 10.1017/S0269888912000227
    shu

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