Avidyne and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were awarded a $4 million, three-year grant to study Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) under the FAA’s Airborne Traffic Situational Awareness with Alerts (TSAA) program.
The TSAA program includes the prototyping and demonstration of functional hardware, along with the drafting of the industry standards for conflict detection and alerting to be adopted by ADS-B vendors, Avidyne, based in Lincoln, Mass., said.
“ADS-B is integral to the NextGen Air Transportation System, and we are pleased to be a part of the development process for this important safety-enhancement,” said Dan Schwinn, Avidyne’s president and CEO. “Through the TSAA program, we are defining the algorithms for conflict detection, and also for reducing false alerts and nuisance alerts in high-traffic airport and approach environments for aircraft using ADS-B.”
Initial TSAA research, application development, and simulations were completed in 2011, and flight tests and refinements are being accomplished throughout 2012. New minimum operational performance standards (MOPS) will be defined in the second half of 2013 and the new Technical Standard Order (TSO) is expected to be published and available for all manufacturers soon after that.
The final results of the TSAA program will ultimately affect the MOPS for Aircraft Surveillance Applications described in DO-317, and a revision to TSO-C195.