ATM Modernization, Commercial, Embedded Avionics

ADS-B Surveillance Data Commercially Available

By Tish Drake | July 20, 2010
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ITT Corp. said air-traffic surveillance data collected from its nationwide Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) network is available for sale to customers such as airlines, airports and aviation service providers.

In an announcement today at the Farnborough Airshow, ITT said precise, continuously updated positional information collected through its system architecture, which fuses surveillance data from sources including the satellite-based ADS-B network, terminal and enroute air-traffic control radars and the Airport Surface Detection Equipment, Model X (ASDE-X) runway surveillance system at major U.S. airports, can be streamed to customers to help optimize business operations.

The system, which is separate of the ADS-B operational path, supports streaming as well as archiving and retrieval of data for historical trend analysis, and a situation awareness application for flight track visualization for purposes such as fleet management.

“ITT is delivering a complete, accurate and rapidly updating data service that provides tracking and flight data for all aircraft operating in the U.S. National Airspace System,” said John Kefaliotis, ITT vice president of next generation transportation systems.

“With strict adherence to guidelines for data delivery provided by the FAA, ITT looks forward to offering the highest quality data service to a wide range of aviation industry businesses for whom the highest quality aviation data set available is of commercial value.”

ITT in August 2007 was awarded the contract from FAA to build a nationwide ADS-B ground infrastructure consisting of 794 radio stations, control stations for processing data and service delivery points at air-traffic control facilities. Segment 1 of the contract calls for the construction of 330 radio station sites, or about 40 percent of the network, by September. Nationwide availability is expected in 2013.

Kefaliotis reported on the progress of the ground infrastructure roll-out June 9, during the Avionics Magazine webinar, “ADS-B: Progress and Implementation.”

“We have made very substantial progress in the deployment of that infrastructure,” he said. “Of the three major control stations that we intend to implement, two are operational — one in Ashburn, Va., one in Dallas, Texas — with a West Coast control station due to be set up relatively soon. Our network operations center is operational and we’ve made substantial progress in deploying radio station infrastructure.”

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