Graph-Based Dynamic Airspace Configuration Algorithm for Terminal Airspace

摘要

To solve the increasing inefficiency of the current National Airspace System (NAS) caused by soaring air travel demand, the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) is proposed to transform the current ground-based, rigidly structured airspace to a dynamic and adaptive satellite-based airspace. Under the framework of dynamic airspace configuration, a lot of work has been done with dynamically sectorizing the airspace, but most of it is focusing on the en route airspace. Since the terminal airspace is the bottleneck of aircraft operations, dynamically restructuring the terminal airspace to make it capable of adapting to the ever changing air traffic patterns and distribution is increasingly attracting researchers' attention. We propose a graph-based dynamic airspace configuration algorithm for the terminal airspace. The proposed algorithm not only makes the best of the valuable experience we have gained in the research of the en route airspace configuration, but also takes into full consideration the significant differences of the terminal airspace from the en route airspace.