Issues concerning the certification/approval of the Aeronautical Telecommunications Network

The deployment of the ATN will be essential if the world´s ATC system is to keep on growing to satisfy demand, and it must be possible to use it to support safety related applications if it is to have the required impact. Its specification has been accepted by ICAO and validated through many prototypes and trials. We are now in the phase of developing the operational systems and the last big technical issue is their certification for operational use. This paper has attempted to present the issues involved in this and to provide an overview of the likely approach to certification. Formal methods are expected to be important in the certification of end system software on both the airborne side and on the ground. However, systems management and the effectiveness of operational day to day network management may well be the key issue for the approval for operational use of the ground ATN Internet