Eurocontrol Focuses on WAM

Eurocontrol announced a plan Thursday to promote broader awareness of Wide Area Multilateration (WAM) to provide technical and financial benefits to airspace users. WAM, a technique in which several ground receiving stations listen to signals transmitted from an aircraft and then mathematically calculate its position in three dimensions, was the subject of an industry workshop last month at which 150 people from 30 countries representing air navigation service providers, states, military, industry, airlines and universities, attended. The workshop requested Eurocontrol to intensify its efforts to promote the implementation of WAM systems throughout Europe and to expedite the development of surveillance products to process WAM data. “WAM is an important surveillance technique that is now becoming widely available. By sharing our knowledge and experiences we hope to highlight its maturity and to encourage greater deployment of this new, inexpensive, high performance system,” said Mel Rees, head of the Eurocontrol Surveillance Division.