An Improved Cellular-Automaton-Based Algorithm for Real-Time Aircraft Landing Scheduling

Aircraft Landing Scheduling (ALS) plays an important role in ensuring safety and efficiency of flight operation in terminal area in the air traffic management domain. Since ALS problem is multi-constraint and large-scale, existing algorithms can hardly deal with it efficiently. This paper firstly introduces the mathematic model of ALS problem and the 1D Cellular-Automaton model for simulating aircraft landing process. Then, based on above two models and a practice terminal area scenario, an improved 2D-Cellular-Automaton-based algorithm is presented for solving real-time ALS problem. Compared with previous approaches for ALS, the improved algorithm puts emphasis on not only flight speed, but also flight actual landing route, which can more exactly simulate practical aircraft landing process and provide feasible aircraft landing sequence. Empirical studies, using the scenario of Chengdu Shuangliu Airport and corresponding records of flight tracks, show that our proposed algorithm outperforms existing ones.