Autonomous decentralized surveillance system and continuous target tracking technology for air traffic control applications

Secondary Surveillance Radar (SSR) is one kind of advanced air traffic control radars that provide aircraft position and identification to air traffic controllers. However, with the rapid growth in air traffic, it brings two problems that hinder the continuous aircraft surveillance to current separated SSR systems. To solve these problems, Autonomous Continuous Target Tracking Technology (ACTTT) with a decentralized network structure has been proposed. In the system, SSRs are connected to a network, and autonomously coordinate for continuous tracking by sharing target information. In this paper, the Autonomous Decentralized Surveillance System architecture is proposed and clarified. Then, based on this architecture the validity of proposed technology is proved by computer simulations in multi-node environments. Moreover, the practical experiments are implemented based on the real system which consists of two networked SSRs with ACTTT functions. The results of simulations and experiments show the effectiveness of proposed system architecture and technology for achieving continuous aircraft surveillance.