Receding horizon control for aircraft arrival sequencing and scheduling

Airports, especially busy hub airports, proved to be the bottleneck resources in the air traffic control system. How to carry out arrival scheduling and sequencing effectively and efficiently is one of main concerns to improve the safety, capacity, and efficiency of the airports. This paper introduces the concept of receding horizon control (RHC) to the problem of arrival scheduling and sequencing in a dynamic environment. The potential benefits RHC could bring in terms of airborne delay and computational burden are investigated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. It is pointed out that while achieving similar performance as existing schemes, the new arrival scheduling and sequencing scheme significantly reduces the computational burden and provides potential for developing new optimization algorithms for further reducing airborne delay.