India will soon make further forays into space-based technologies through an application for surveillance and safety by providing automatic and constant updates of aircraft location while flying over oceanic regions. The Airports Authority of India (AAI) has successfully completed backup trials with the space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B), used in all aircraft, technology that allows an aircraft to automatically send its location updates via satellites to air traffic controllers.
Currently, unless a pilot himself updates his location (sends timely signals) while flying in oceanic regions, the location of an aircraft remains unknown to controllers. Experts said that with this technology, chances of incidents like the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines aircraft can be avoided. After successful trials, AAI plans to start using the technology to keep surveillance over complete oceanic traffic within the Indian airspace.
Space-based ADS-B is a technology made by a company named Aireon which has been certified as an air navigation service provider (ANSP) for ADS-B by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), an agency of the European Union with responsibility for civil aviation safety. Aireon has been providing their service to NAV Canada (the country’s civil air navigation), Seychelles and the United Kingdom. AAI will be the first ANSP in South Asia to start operating space-based ADS-B.
When ADS-B is in use, an aircraft broadcasts its position with the help of its on-board computer system while the ground-based sensors receive these ADS-B signals which are then picked up by the local air traffic control (ATC) for keeping surveillance over an aircraft.
Since these reports are accurate, it not only enhances passenger safety but also lets ATCs to efficiently use the reports to apply optimum separations between two aircraft flying in the same region, which also results in increasing the capacity of a given airspace.
Officials privy to the development said some security concerns with the ADS-B signals were initially raised, but these doubts have been cleared gradually and ADS-B is gaining confidence from ATCs and pilots to be used as a surveillance tool across the world. Many countries have mandated this technology as an essential equipment for aircraft. Currently Chennai and Mumbai airports are running the trials.
