Networked In-Flight Validation Environment for Air Traffic Management Concepts

Modernization of the National Airspace System (NAS) will involve future air traffic management (ATM) concepts of operation and technology frameworks that rely on the automated exchange of information between aircraft, and between aircraft and ground-based air traffic control systems. In-flight validation is critical to the acceptance and ultimate implementation of these concepts, so an approach and enabling infrastructure are needed to reduce the costs of flight tests. The approach and infrastructure must also support refinement and validation of interoperability standards for enabling communications and surveillance technologies. The innovation described here is a concept to develop an in-situ test environment for advanced ATM concepts by leveraging existing computing and network infrastructure and existing simulations of future surveillance equipage.