Program Overview

For over 30 years, Lincoln Laboratory has supported the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the development of new technology for air-traffic control. Work historically focused on aircraft surveillance and weather sensing, collision avoidance, and air/ground datalink communications. In recent years, the emphasis in air traffic control has shifted to the development of advanced integrated weather systems, decision-support technologies to improve aviation safety, open system architecture applied to air surveillance sensors, information security, and collaborative approaches to air-traffic management.

ATC room in NY/NJAir traffic control room utilizing the Laboratory- developed Integrated Terminal Weather System and Corridor Integrated Weather System

Integrated Weather Systems

The Laboratory has developed sensors, automated forecasting systems, and decision-support tools to reduce the impact of adverse weather on commercial aviation. The Laboratory is developing algorithms from Doppler weather radar, automated surface observing stations, geostationary environmental satellites, and numerical weather-prediction models to forecast thunderstorm activity; the goal is to improve the prediction of convective initiation from very short tactical time scales (30 minutes to two hours) out to eight hours in order to enable strategic planning. The Route Availability Planning Tool (RAPT) represents the Laboratory’s first work in the area of coupling weather forecast information into decision-support tools used by air-traffic management. RAPT has been demonstrated in New York and future applications are expected for other major U.S. airports.

The Laboratory-developed Corridor Integrated Weather System (CIWS) is in use at eight en route centers and six major terminal control areas in the northeast U.S., as well as in the Air Traffic Control System Command Center. The CIWS integrates data from national weather radars with thunderstorm-forecasting technology. Ongoing software engineering work to restructure the CIWS prototype will enable coverage of the continental U.S.

The Integrated Terminal Weather System, with the one-hour Terminal Convective Weather Forecast, was developed and tested by Lincoln Laboratory at airports in New York, Dallas, Orlando, and Memphis. It is now an FAA operational system built by Raytheon Company and deployed at most large airports. This project illustrates the complete cycle of the Laboratory’s work on an FAA system from concept, research, and prototype to technology transfer, contractor development, production, and certified operations.

Air Traffic Control Systems

Lincoln Laboratory developed air traffic control surveillance technologies which are now in operational use around the world. These technologies include the Mode-Select beacon system, the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, the Precision Runway Monitor system, and the Moving Target Detector signal processor used in the current generation of Airport Surveillance Radars.  Our newest efforts focus on utilization of the Global Positioning System for surveillance and improved safety on the airport surface.

The Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) is now mandated in U.S. and international airspace for all civil aircraft with weight exceeding 15,000 kg or capable of carrying more than 29 passengers.  Lincoln’s contribution includes development and flight testing of the air-to-air surveillance technology and TCAS-TCAS coordination algorithms, analysis to assess the performance of the collision avoidance logic, and development of a U.S. encounter model.

The Mode S beacon system has also been accepted for international use.  The  use of Mode S messaging waveforms and signal processing techniques have expanded beyond the Mode S sensor to the other Monopulse Secondary Surveillance Radar (MSSR) systems developed world wide. Mode S transponders have also been exploited in conjunction with GPS to provide the broadcast messaging waveforms for the Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast which is a crucial component of the nation's Next-Generation Air Transportation System.

The primary radar technology now widely used in the Airport Surveillance Radar 9 (ASR-9), built by Westinghouse Electric Corporation, was the result of the Laboratory’s original development of Moving Target Detector (MTD) radar techniques.  Upgrades to the ASR-9 were also invented by the Laboratory to improve the traffic-handling and fixed-clutter-rejection capability of the ASR-9. The employed techniques provided a means of dealing more effectively with a changing clutter environment (e.g., highway traffic, anomalous propagation, and birds).

Precision Runway Monitor (PRM) work supported a reduction from 4300 feet to 3400 feet of required runway separation for independent simultaneous operation of parallel runways in instrument conditions.  Experiments by Lincoln showed how this reduction in separation could be done safely by using enhanced monitor sensors and displays and an automated alarm system. 

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