ATM Modernization, Commercial, Military

Sensis to Upgrade Frankfurt Multilateration System

By Tish Drake | June 13, 2011
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Fraport AG, the owner and manager of Frankfurt Airport (FRA), will upgrade its Sensis Corp. multilateration system to accommodate capacity expansion and growth at the airport.

Sensis will upgrade the multilateration system, which uses multiple low-maintenance, non-rotating sensors to triangulate aircraft locations based on transponder signals to provide air traffic controllers with precise aircraft position and identification information regardless of weather conditions. Frankfurt Airport was the industry’s first airport to select multilateration for surface surveillance, awarding Sensis a contract back in 1999. Since then, the Sensis system has been expanded or altered several times to meet FRA’s changing geographic and traffic requirements.

“For more than 10 years, the Sensis system has successfully grown and evolved with Frankfurt Airport, consistently providing Fraport apron controllers and DFS Deusche Flugsicherung air traffic controllers at FRA with the precise surveillance needed to handle the busy ground traffic at the world’s ninth busiest passenger airport,” said Fraport. “Our massive capacity expansion with a new runway and terminal areas requires not only infrastructure but also dependable and leading-edge multilateration technology. This is part of our Operational Excellent program to ensure that infrastructure expansion, staffing, procedures and operational technologies are all expanded in tandem to handle the capacity and traffic growth volumes of the future. Sensis has been a long-time partner in helping us meet our operational goals under a tight timeline."

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