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Home » Culture » Travel

Monday, March 2, 2009

GPS soars high with FAA

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  • A rain of change gathers over the control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington as the traffic control system starts to move to a satellite approach. (Getty Images)
  • John Kefaliotis, vice president of ITT's Next Generation Transportation Systems, is next to a model of one of the radio towers for the new Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) system that the firm developed for air traffic controllers to improve safety. (Barbara L. Salisbury/The Washington Times)
  • David Stewart, a Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) systems engineer who is working with ITT Corp., shows a 3-D simulation of airplanes flying with images that would appear on a pilot's radar screen using the new air traffic control system that ITT is building. It's operational in Florida and expected nationwide by 2013. (Barbara L. Salisbury/The Washington Times)
  • A radar monitor in the Newark Liberty International Airport control tower shows the planes in the area in New Jersey. New satellite systems allow more plane control. (Getty Images)
  • A global positioning system display provides more plane-location data. (Getty Images)

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By Mark A. Kellner

Imagine how much easier the commute would be if you had the ability to see not just the traffic around you, but also for five miles ahead. Think of the notion that you could know what to expect when crossing the Woodrow Wilson Bridge or getting on the Beltway at Connecticut Avenue.

That's the basic idea behind an 18-month-old effort to upgrade the nation's air traffic control system.

After decades of dependence on radar, a new system based on global positioning technology that uses satellites to determine an object's place, time and velocity is making inroads.

ITT Corp.'s Defense Systems unit, based in Herndon, is the lead contractor on the effort, which is called an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B, system, for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The effort, which began in 2007 and could be extended to 2025 by the FAA, might be worth as much as $1.8 billion to ITT, said Vincent Capezzuto, the agency's director of Surveillance and Broadcast Services.

"This is the beginning of a new infrastructure that's going to be around for 50 years. It's exciting to be a part of it," Mr. Capezzuto said. ITT has been "performing very well," he added.

The system, explained John T. Kefaliotis, ITT's vice president of Next Generation Transportation Systems, will deliver "at a lower cost, more accurate and more frequent updating" of positional information for aircraft, once a second versus once every 12 seconds with radar.

"We can also survey aircraft where previously it wasn't possible, such as from oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico," he added. The system's ground receivers and transmitters can be placed in many different kinds of locations, allowing for greater expansion of the service, he said.

The new program, although carrying the overall tag of ADS-B, is actually composed of four services: GPS coverage from a plane back to the ground and adjacent aircraft on a 1090 MHz band for large planes; "universal" GPS access at 978 MHz for smaller planes known as general aviation aircraft; a Traffic Information Service, or TIS-B; and a Flight Information Service, or FIS-B, which covers weather and aeronautical data.

GPS signals are used because the technology is not only newer and more advanced, but it also covers more data. Each plane can be assigned a unique identifier, and the flight numbers can be matched and relayed to surrounding planes, showing pilots "nearby" flights that might be above or below a given plane but still in the vicinity.

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