Thales: ADS-B Roll-Out Advances

A key subcontractor in deploying the ground infrastructure for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) in the United States said the program is meeting all requirements.

“It’s going ahead. The team has been hitting every milestone on time with the FAA,” said Paul Kahn, managing director of Thales Global Navigation and Airports.

Thales is providing the dual-link 1090 MHz and Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) radios for ADS-B ground stations as part of a team led by ITT Corp., which was awarded the contract for the ground infrastructure from FAA in August 2007.

Meeting with Avionics Magazine recently in Washington, D.C., Thales executives said FAA’s commissioning of 11 radio sites in southern Florida in November led to an order from ITT for 333 additional radios. The ADS-B national deployment will require a total of 794 ground-based terminals, most with two radios each.

Thales and ITT were in the process of qualifying radios for ADS-R, standing for the “rebroadcast,” or translation of signals between 1090 MHz and UAT-equipped aircraft, via the ground stations. This is deemed a “critical” service under the ADS-B contract.

“It was designed in the architecture of the radios from the beginning and we’re in the process of doing a design qual with ITT to include that additional functionality,” said Wayne Dohlman, president and CEO of Thales ATM Inc. “It will involve formal lab testing to demonstrate that the data you put into one link comes out properly on the other link. Once that’s done, it will be deployed in the field and go through site acceptance and service acceptance testing.”