New ATC System To Rely On AT&T Cell Towers

longacre writes "The FAA has awarded the long-anticipated first contract for development of its NextGen air traffic control system: a $1.8 billion deal with ITT Corporation, beating out bids from aerospace heavyweights such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. ITT's design will make use of hundreds of specially modified AT&T cellular phone towers which, in addition to their normal communications duties, will relay an aircraft's position to air traffic controllers and other aircraft in real time. The initial contract is only enough to wire and test the so-called ADS-B system in the Philadelphia area and around the Gulf of Mexico — hooking up the rest of the country will take an estimated 20 years and $20 billion."

Pretty expensive...

[Slashidiot (1179447)]

Wow, 20 billion is quite a lot of money. I guess they are expecting really high benefits from that. But I think that a better air traffic control can get you no more than a 30% increase in capacity. From TFA:

Doug Church, an official with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, says that while his organization welcomes technological advances, he's concerned that NextGen not be viewed as a panacea. "An airport can still only handle so many flights," he says. "What we need is more concrete on the ground" in the form of new runways and airfields, he says.

I think this guy is pretty much spot on. With 20 billion you can build LOTS of runways. I'm sure there is another way of getting rid of the bottleneck of air traffic control capacity. Just hire more people! In Europe we are managing quite well with "traditional" ways...

Re:Pretty expensive...

[TooMuchToDo (882796)]

The problem with building more runways is that in most areas (New York, Los Angelas, Chicago), development is already done around the major airport. You can't expand further out. What's needed is for airlines to move away from the hub and spoke model, and fly smaller planes directly between routes. ADS-B will help quite a bit with this.

On an unrelated note, I think IIT should have bid out the contract for tower locations, instead of just handing it to ATT.

Flag carriers can't abandon Hub and Spoke

[Dorceon (928997)]

International flights are operated under treaties which frequently place restrictions on number of weekly flights allowed by all flag carriers. (Not everyone has Open Skies with the USA.) Plus, flying over large bodies of water requires planes that either have more than two engines, or are rated for long distances under a single engine. (Not that they frequently lose an engine any more the way four-engined piston planes used to when the rule was made, but a rule's a rule.) Even in Open Skies cases, some airports (ie. London Heathrow) are heavily slot-constrained. What this all means is that you can't in general fly smaller planes point-to-point on international routes. You often have to fly the biggest plane you can, because you only get one flight a day. (This is what motivated Airbus Industrie to make the A380.) Thus, carriers that have both international and domestic routes are forced into a hub-and-spoke model because they have to get people to the hub to get them on the international flight.

Re:

[arivanov (12034)]

Not that they frequently lose an engine any more the way...

This one lost both: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236 [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Dorceon (928997)]

It sprung a fuel leak. No number of engines would have kept it in the air.

Re:

[arivanov (12034)]

Actually no. It sprung a fuel leak and the pilots decided to equalise the starboard and port fuel tanks. If they would have kept the vent closed they would have lost only the leaking engine. So it was about to lose one anyway, but the pilots error made it two for good measure.

Re:

[petermgreen (876956)]

well one engine was a loss because of the fuel leak, mismanagement of the situation (the exact reasons for which have not been made public iirc but misdiagnoses is suspected) made them lose the other one too.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo (882796)]

I fully agree with you with regards to international flights. I'm speaking more of domestic flights (such as those within the US, as well as those between countries in the Western EU like Ireland, UK, Germany, etc). I think this will become more of reality as Ultra Light Jets become more prominent.

Re:

[Dorceon (928997)]

If you have a lot of domestic flights going to an international gateway for the purposes of connecting onto your international flights, you're naturally going to get people connecting at the hub for domestic flights anyways. Also, the hubs where the problems are worst aren't busy just because they're hubs--they're also the largest cities. NYC is going to have a lot of travel demand whether or not you intentionally hub there, and once you add all those point-to-point flights to NYC, people are going to conne

Re:

[Stonent1 (594886)]

Well here's how I see it. AT&T is the largest GSM service in the US and since GSM is pretty much a world standard, so that shuts out Verizon CDMA (which in my opinion has better coverage than AT&T) If Europe wanted to do the same thing keeping everything GSM would be a wise decision.

Airport Expansion

[DesScorp (410532)]

A little background first: I work in IT at an airport, and I'm somewhat familiar with some of the administrative aspects of airport management.

"The problem with building more runways is that in most areas (New York, Los Angelas, Chicago), development is already done around the major airport. You can't expand further out."

While this is true somewhat, its still not an impediment to airport growth. Most airports are public entities, and thus have powers of eminent domain. Most will try to buy properties they want without resorting to ED in order to keep good relations with the neighbors, but if pressed, they'll use ED if needed. Airports have purchased entire border neighborhoods and paved them over, and they've gone to court and seized them as well. They still have to pay compensation, but likely not what owners would have gotten had they sold when first approached.

"What's needed is for airlines to move away from the hub and spoke model, and fly smaller planes directly between routes."

Airlines are already doing this, but with mixed success. The fact is, those kinds of routes just aren't as profitable. In fact, the airline industry will probably contract severely over the next twenty years. We might well end up with only two or three major carriers, and far fewer airports, as smaller regional airports close down. In order to keep current levels of air service, unless a major technology breakthrough comes along that makes direct flights cheaper, it'll take massive government subsidies to keep the number of flights we have now. I just don't see that happening.

Just as the coming of the airliner spelled the end of passenger rail, the coming of teleconferencing may spell the end of business travel, which is what drove the airlines in the first place. The airline industry will likely be dominated by cargo in a quarter century, with goods far outstripping people in the airplanes. Its likely that air freight companies will be America's largest commercial air providers in a quarter century. Fedex already has the largest commercial fleet in the world.

A much-smaller airline industry will be transporting mostly pleasure travelers, as high speed Internet has made long distance meetings a reality. America's greatest aircraft designer, Lockheed's Kelly Johnson, has predicted that the airline industry will basically disappear soon because of advances in IT. Looking at the numbers, its hard to disagree with him

Re:Pretty expensive...

[Forseti (192792)]

Yeah, as long as your local government is smart enough to manage such a project intelligently, and that half the project doesn't get canned after the next election. Quebec/Montreal spent obscene amounts of money of it's Mirabel airport [wikipedia.org] and now we're about to decommission it because the high-speed train and connecting highway was never completed, so people keep using the old Airport on the island...

That's a lot of money ...

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

I'm guessing that that 20 bil is just for the prototype. It'll be another hundred before it's actually operational, if ever.

The real cause of delays...

[jbwolfe (241413)]

FTA: "the entire overhaul will cost taxpayers up to $20 billion over 20 years. But the airline industry insists that any early advances can't come soon enough.

You can say that again. From a users perspective, they have been doing things the same way for as along as I've been involved (20 years)- well overdue for some significant technological advances! It really doesn't strike me as a difficult problem as it boils down to to a space/time/position equation.

And again: "We are at catastrophic levels in terms of congestion," says David Castelveter of the Air Transport Association, the trade group for major U.S. airlines. "The controllers are using age-old procedures and separation standards that they put into place decades ago.""

While this might make a difference for enroute control, it will have no impact on airport congestion. For that, only more concrete will make a difference and this is the primary driver of delays. Huge barriers exist to improving airports, both political and economic.

Re:

[TubeSteak (669689)]

While this might make a difference for enroute control, it will have no impact on airport congestion. For that, only more concrete will make a difference and this is the primary driver of delays. Huge barriers exist to improving airports, both political and economic.

You may or may not be aware of this, but large numbers of smaller planes have been pressed into service over the last several years. Smaller turboprops may be cheaper to fly, but they still use up gates, takeoff/landing slots and Traffic Control resources.

These smaller planes carry less people without having a proportionatly smaller airport footprint (for lack of a better word).

WTF? Cell Towers?

[brunes69 (86786)]

Why can't the planes own internal GPS relay their EXACT position to the ATC towers?

What am I missing?

Re:

[EmagGeek (574360)]

They can. see my other post in this thread. Mode S transponders are GPS linked and transmit an aircraft's exact location digitally on top of their squawk. Any Mode-S receiver can receive this signal and know the tail number of the plane and its exact location. The thing is that the transponders can only transmit so far, so it helps to have receivers everywhere.

Re:WTF? Cell Towers?

[Dantoo (176555)]

That is precisely what this (ADS-B) does. At the moment, when not in radar coverage, the pilot uses the radio to report his position which he reads from his GPS (or other instruments). ATC copy this down and track his movement from these position updates. Now the problem with this is that by the time he reads out the position and ATC copies it down, the aircraft has actually traveled several miles.

This is the start of the problem. You don't actually have a pinpoint position to work with. You actually have a circle of probability which is combination of equipment and reporting errors. You could fit a lot of planes on a 100 mile route if you only had to keep them a mile apart and you had constant, pinpoint instant updating position information.

After getting the position report, ATC now have an expanding bubble of possible positions the aircraft could actually occupy until they get the next voice update which might be 30 minutes hence. This could end up expanding to 30 miles wide and 120 miles long before it is updated again. (Updating resets the probability circle back to just a couple of miles again). To keep aircraft from colliding you have to separate the the great big probability of position areas, not just a couple of points. Two aircraft could occupy 200 miles of airspace and it is now full; room for no more.

ADS removes the pilot and the ATC from the position reporting chain. The aircraft equipment just codes and sends the position directly to the ATC equipment. The position then automagically just appears on the controller's screen (with a display note saying that it is ADS derived). In busy airspace these reports can be generated only seconds apart pulling that circular error of probability back in to only a couple of miles with each update. You can now fit 50 planes into the airspace where you might have put only a couple before.

RADAR does exactly the same thing as ADS. The ground equipment asks the plane where it is and it sends back a reflection (primary) or a coded pulse (secondary) which is then displayed on a controllers screen. The difference with ADS is that instead of an enormously expensive piece of ground equipment to decode and receive the signal it can all be done on a regular vhf/uhf radio. If you add another radio antenna to a cell tower nobody cares. You can also utilise the existing ground network to carry the signal back to the ATC centre. You don't have to pay techs to install and maintain your own proprietary equipment.

Try building a couple of hundred multi-million dollar radar dishes across the landscape and every kook, luny, luddite and portable Faraday cage wearing weirdo will be out to stop you and protect the speckled barn toad as a bonus.

The huge advantages of ADS are that it is accurate, cheap and has a small ground footprint. It can be adapted for long range (hf) and satellite updating for oceanic sectors. It's all win. If someone asks "what will do when it breaks?" Well look out he window, we're doing it now.

Re:

[ScrewMaster (602015)]

DUH nothing. If the planes can talk to the towers they could certainly transmit their GPS co-ordinates. There may be some reason why the Feds don't want aircraft broadcasting their precise positions, though.

Re:

[TubeSteak (669689)]

If the planes can talk to the towers they could certainly transmit their GPS co-ordinates. There may be some reason why the Feds don't want aircraft broadcasting their precise positions, though.

At least a few States have time delayed (10~15 minutes) maps of the positions of air traffic around major airports.

Look for it online, California is probably the easiest one to find.

Relies on Mode S?

[EmagGeek (574360)]

It sounds like this system is just picking up the Mode-S transponders in modern planes, and relaying that information to ATC. Aircraft equipped with modern GPS, even general aviation aircraft, also pick up these Mode-S transmissions and plot other aircraft on the GPS display.

Right now, only Mode-C is required by law, and even then only within 30 nautical miles of a Class B airport. Mode C just transmits your altitude information and it is up to radar to determine your x-y position. Mode S is much more accurate because GPS is accurate to feet, where radar is only accurate to hundreds (or maybe thousands) of feet in x-y, and not accurate at all for altitude (which is why we have Mode C).

I can't imagine it'll actually cost 20 Billion to retrofit cell towers with Mode S receivers and internet relays. A land-based Mode S receiver is probably $100, and they can ride the data on AT&T's EDGE or 3G network for next to free. This seems like a cash grab to me.

Re:

[rbanffy (584143)]

"A land-based Mode S receiver is probably $100"

You obviously never saw a government buying stuff ;-)

Uh... (bubble-buster inside)

[TheHawke (237817)]

We're going to rely on tech that's been developed by a company that's primary specialty is WASTEWATER?! Oh, sure they have a defense systems department, but their main headline is fluids management.

Someone get me an aspirin and kick the laugh track on.

Re:

[BlueParrot (965239)]

Keep laughing, Nokia started out as a wood-pulp mill...

They won, if you call that winning

[amightywind (691887)]

I am glad ITT won. I worked a contract on Lockmart's effort. It was one of the worst large projects I have ever seen. It was a C++/AIX effort and managed by pinheads like something out of the 1950's. For what the software does it was horrendously complex. Because the government is unwilling to retrain the air traffic controllers the system has an bizarre anachronistic GUI. They actually worked hard to reimplement the interface feature for bizarre feature. It is no great comfort that the US depends on systems like this for air safety.

Re:

[Oswald (235719)]

Which bizarre GUI interface are we talking about here? Center controllers have a sort of GUI overlaid on their radar scopes, but it doesn't do anything more complicated than presenting "buttons" to be clicked. They have a different GUI on their URET, but that's only a few years old, and it's a pretty standard X interface.

FAA management is fucked up indeed, but I honestly can't think of what legacy GUI they would be working to preserve.

Dont see how this will help

[tyler_larson (558763)]

So, it sounds like they're spending $1.8 billion to create an infrastructure to do what our current infrastructure does, except using cell phone towers. How is this better than radar + mode C or mode S?

Re:

[rbanffy (584143)]

GPS is accurate to a few feet, while radar is not.

IIRC, it's also more automated and allows mostly straight-line flights until you reach the airport, reducing distances traveled and fuel consumption. Even a modest reduction in fuel consumption gets a huge number in the end. This ends up in lower fares and more profit for airlines that, in turn, allows them to invest more in more sophisticated technology.

The increased accuracy and automation also allow for more density - more planes in the air at the same ti

Congratulations to Håkan Lans!

[vinsci (537958)]

The ADS-B system was invented by Håkan Lans [wikipedia.org]. His business home page: GP&C Systems International AB [www.gpc.se].

Re:

[m2943 (1140797)]

You mean the guy who filed a patent on bitmapped color graphics displays a year after the Apple II shipped with the feature? (Not to mention other uses prior to that.)

Re:

[vinsci (537958)]

There is a very, very interesting (and scandalous) background story here. Take your time: http://www.mobergpublications.se/patents/index.html [mobergpublications.se]

For your information, Apple licensed the Lans color graphics patent as did IBM and others.

Re:

[m2943 (1140797)]

For your information, Apple licensed the Lans color graphics patent as did IBM and others.

Heck, I was using color graphics displays prior to 1979; anybody who filed a patent on this in 1979 was a patent troll. If Apple paid for it, it simply means that he was asking for a small enough sum not to be worth fighting--a typical patent troll strategy.

There is a very, very interesting (and scandalous) background story here.

The guy was trying to claim infringement on a patent he knew he didn't own, and judges are

Build More Airports

[p0tat03 (985078)]

... and the public transit systems to tie them into urban centres. There is no reason why airports have to be within a metropolitan area, if there's a fast monorail/train/rapid transit from the city to the outskirts, there is PLENTY of cheap land left to build airports.

Or better yet, start re-developing our aging and deteriorating rail networks. IMHO there's no good reason much of the east coast is dominated by air travel at all. I'm not sure about Americans, but here in Canada traveling from Toronto to Ottawa (about 450km) takes about the same time by air as by rail (including check-in, security times, etc). Rapid rail transit, IMHO, is THE answer to short and medium range travel. The only time one should have to step on board an aircraft is when flying halfway across the continent. Even going all the way across the state should be well within the means of fast rail travel (not to mention cheaper).

Hell, on a train I get on-board WiFi, a HUGE amount of legroom, seats that don't try to squeeze me, and non-dry non-stuffy air. Not to mention a soothing, quiet clickety-clack of the rails instead of the roar of jet engines. Oh, and no security, no travel restrictions... It is a superior way to travel in almost every way.

Re:

[Nkwe (604125)]

Would you be happy to have that new airport (or its supporting systems) in your back yard? Do you want the the end of the runway, the flight path, the road system, or the rail line feeding the airport to go right by your house? I would like more airports as well but I don't want it in my back yard. You don't want it in your back yard, and pretty much all locations that could benefit by more airports are going to be in someone's back yard. While building a new airport is not impossible, it is very difficult

I agree...

[Goonie (8651)]

I cannot for the life of me understand why there isn't a TGV-style fast train between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington DC. Next step would probably be a line from New York or Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and from there on to Detroit.

Re:Build More Airports

[moosesocks (264553)]

The difference is that high-speed trainset will tend to stay upright when derailed, and slowly grind to a stop due to its articulated design. Although the train will "derail" in the sense that the wheels will be touching the ground instead of the track, in order for one car to topple, either an extraordinary amount of force must be applied to that one car, as to cause it to shear away from the rest of the trainset (at both ends!), or the entire trainset would have to topple simultaneously. The amount of energy that would be required for either of those things to happen is considerably more than what you'd get from some nutjob carrying a backpack full of explosives.

The French TGV has had a number of high-speed derailments, and out of the 1.2 billion people that have used the service, there hasn't been a single fatality while the train was running over 100mph (160km/h), with an exceptional low-speed safety record as well. This includes a number of rather severe incidents [wikipedia.org], including a terrorist bombing, level crossing accidents, and at least two incidents in which the ground beneath the track dropped into a sinkhole.

Compared to virtually any other form of transport on the planet, the TGV's safety record is probably as close to perfect as you're ever going to get.

Unlike a plane, in which a bomb would likely down the craft, killing all on board, an attack upon a train a highs-speed train wouldn't be all that deadly, given that there would hardly be any casualties outside of the blast radius. The train station would be a far greater point of vulnerability than the train itself.

So, no. I don't think we have anything to worry about. If you're concerned about safety and security, articulated high-speed rail is hands-down the safest form of transport known to man.

Pros and Cons

[vmxeo (173325)]

To me, piggy-backing the ATC on AT&T's equipment would have some immediately obvious advantages and disadvantages. On the downside, air traffic controllers might start noticing flights getting 'dropped' from their radar screens, especially during peak call times. On the other hand, if they get too busy, the NSA could totally jump in and help them out.

Re:

[compro01 (777531)]

it has nothing to do with the cell phone systems. they're just sticking the equipment for this system on the same tower. why build new towers if you can just toss it on existing ones?

The smokey room

[greg_barton (5551)]

U.S. Government: Can we listen to all Internet traffic? We'll give you the fat FCC contract.

AT&T: Um...OK!

Looks like

[certsoft (442059)]

Looks like spying for the NSA paid off. When does the revolution start?

Re:

[phillips321 (955784)]

FROM ARTICLE Today, radar-based air traffic control is reliable but makes inefficient use of airspace; widely separated planes fly dogleg jetways (yellow). The GPS-based NextGen system, slated for completion by 2025, will straighten routes (blue) and allow more planes to safely share the skies. Currently, Air Traffic Control Towers (ATCT) guide planes through takeoff, then hand them over to a Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility that keeps approach and departure corridors orderly over the next

Re:

[eakerin (633954)]

Finally, something to do while circling the Philadelphia airport for 30 minutes waiting for your turn to land. I've never had as many late flights as when I was flying into and out of PHL.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo (882796)]

You still can't use your cellphone on a plane (at least, not until the plane has a picocell onboard with a satellite uplink). The equipment to support ADS-B is going to be colocated at ATT cell tower sites.

Re:

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

Whoosh!

Both literally and figuratively.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo (882796)]

Sorry, at times it's hard on Slashdot to determine if someone's sarcasm bit has been set, or their just a genuine dolt.

Re:

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

I usually take the low road and assume both are true...

Re:

[FooAtWFU (699187)]

My guess is that they'd point the ATC system facing Up, for planes waay above the towers, instead of aiming it down at homes near all that pesky Terrain.

And besides, it's not as if they have dozens of regular ATC towers over your mountains right now, is it?

Re:

[petermgreen (876956)]

Some yes but far less than people on the ground have.

the higher up the user is the less bumps in the ground matter because the angle from the tower to the user for a given horizonal difference is steeper.

Re:

[DrBuzzo (913503)]

The signals are line of sight. You probably don't get a good signal because you're in the middle of a plateau and thus the ground is between you and the tower. Aircraft don't have nearly as much of a problem. At 30 thousand feet they're will just need to be some tower in sight within 100+ miles, depending on the strength of the signal and such, but they definitely can go a long way. I would not worry about it. Having towers located around the country should insure there will always be a couple avali

Re:

[Tacvek (948259)]

Simply abolish the FAA which is unconstitutional anyway.

The Constitution does not give the federal government authority to regulate travel and run a traffic directing organization

First of all, do consider that the FAA being an organization regulating interstate commerce is not very far-fetched. After all, most flights involve crossing state lines. The FAA is not really much of a stretch of that clause. There are much worse abuses. Even if the FAA were to be abolished, the many individual states would likely end up creating a single equivalent agency to regulate flight, as consistency in the regulations is rather important to the industry.