Communications, navigation and surveillance for improved oceanic air traffic operations

Air traffic management around the world is implemented using ground-based communications, navigation and surveillance systems. For obvious reasons, such systems are not available in oceanic airspace, nor are they available in remote land regions. In general, aircraft operating in these regions maintain safe separations by relying on procedural separation methods. Such methods require separations of 50 nautical miles (nm) or more to be maintained. As air traffic across the oceans increases, the procedural separations are leading to increased inefficiencies in oceanic and remote operations. These inefficiencies result from schedule delays, inability to fly preferred routes (for best wind advantages), and the inability to use the most efficient altitudes, leading to higher fuel burn rates. New methods of operating in oceanic and remote airspace are needed, and indeed they are being developed and implemented, but they depend on an improved communications, navigation and surveillance (CNS) systems, which of necessity must be primarily supplied by satellite-based systems. This paper summarizes current and future air traffic management operations, the CNS requirements for future operations and satellite-based systems which have the potential for fulfilling these requirements, and what is needed to bring such system to implementation